by Bill Scheft
Warren Franks had been driving Mort around since the third week of May. An earnest man who for fifteen dollars an hour would give you fifty-dollars-an-hour loyalty, he had begun transporting the elderly six years ago after his landscaping business had become a casualty during the little-publicized Massachusetts landscaping recession. When College Boy’s Delta Shuttle commute to New York to do The Dan Drake Show mushroomed to three times a week, Mort needed someone on call to cart him around. The fact that his father, Jake Spell, had employed a chauffeur named Warren clinched the deal. That and a recommendation from Warren’s aunt, Claire Concannan, who was now in her third month as Mort’s caregiver. Mort, of course, preferred to continue using the term housekeeper.
The woman in charge of in-home care at Hawthorne Hospital had described Claire Concannan to College Boy thusly: “Mr. Sussman, I’m sending you and your uncle a present.” No kidding. Late fifties with a laugh in her early twenties. Heavy-set as if to anchor a featherlight spirit. Boston Irish yet anything but provincial in the kitchen. And most admirable, and inexplicable, the ability to NEVER be in Morton Martin Spell’s way. “A man like your uncle, when he wants you, he’ll find you,” she tried to explain to College Boy. “Otherwise, he’s doesn’t want to find you. So, don’t be they-ah.”
“So, where should you be?”
“Right he-ah.”
Her nephew, Warren, that nephew, had originally come by Vinnin Estates to move a heavy appliance or two while Claire Concannan straightened up the kitchen for the first time in eight months. He ended up driving Mort to the dentist and taking him to Howard Johnson’s afterward for an ice cream. Howard Johnson’s. The cotton gin. Where had College Boy been that day? Must have been a Monday. No, Friday.
Today was Sunday, and instead of his traditional dash to make the eight-thirty P.M. shuttle, he was facing nothing but change-ups. A one-thirty P.M. departure. Luggage. A guy driving him to Logan. A conversation with a customer service rep.
“Okay, let me just make sure of the new address one more time.”
“Sure.”
“301 East Sixty-fifth Street, New York, New York.”
“Right.”
“Okay, then.”
“And you have the name?”
“E. F. Sussman.”
“No! C.—”
“—B. I know C. B. Sussman. I was just teasing. Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” said College Boy. “It was funny.”
Mort had not been on the ride to Logan. It was understandable. Who has the bad taste to move back to New York during the final round of the U.S. Open? Poor planning by both of them. Ten days ago, when he had told his nephew his work here was done, their thoughts were not on the PGA Tour schedule. Not that it would have mattered. Mort would not be along for the send-off. Throughout his professional life, whenever the whiff of acclaim was heading in his direction, Morton Martin Spell ended up conspicuous by his absence. The only exception anyone could remember was the Bertram Hargan Cup, a good prostate ago. Now, at the moment of this most recent honor, winning his old life back while a new one was bestowed upon his nephew, Morton Martin Spell would not attend the award ceremony. He was where he most always was at the time of triumph. And where he wanted to be. Alone. Alone and no trouble to nobody.
Humans are prone to err less in solitude. He’d said many things after this, but that was the final point he had made to College Boy ten days ago. It’s unfair to pin everything on ten days ago, especially given what they had witnessed over the last ten weeks. Once Mort was off the Depakote, his mind and body became eligible for parole. After two weeks, the improvement was daily. Sometimes twice daily.
Sure, the addition of Claire Concannan and her stealth care was giant, but she caught Mort at the beginning of his upward graph. “Your uncle’s smaht,” she’d tell College Boy, “he knows I’m nought fahllin’ for him being any sickah than he is.”
“Claire, you have no idea how he was.”
And after a month, neither did College Boy. The sixteen-hour Sunday/Monday jaunts to Wheels-102 soon became Sunday/Monday, Thursday/Friday. And with that, the Delta Shuttle became a time machine. Leave Thursday night, May, 1992, return Friday noon, Mort 1989. Leave Sunday night, May, 1992, return Monday noon, Mort 1986.
They kept their sixth week appointment with Dr. Zing, who was professionally stunned by his patient. He had received promising updates from College Boy, but to actually witness this man almost jig into his office was something else. “Mort, if you’re not busy this summer, we could tour medical conventions and make a fortune.”
“Not if you keep telling people you’re a twelve-handicap.”
Zing cut his Wellbutrin in half, with instructions to taper off it completely in another six weeks if he still felt good. Between this and his Boston-based neurologist’s decision to shut off his intake of Sinemet, the occupancy rate of Mort’s pillbox had gone from Vegas to Laughlin.
Dr. Blair Cahill did not make the big office reunion, but he and his almost-as-handsome surgeon wife, Lesley, joined Mort and College Boy that night at Rainbow and Stars, where they sat through Michael Feinstein’s early show. All of it. By his own admission, Mort hadn’t done anything like this in ten years, though his critique muscle showed no signs of atrophy. “Next time,” he said to College Boy as they stood with the rest of the audience, “I’d like a little more Gershwin, a little less Feinstein.”
They checked out of the Yale Club the next day, Wednesday, and left after an early lunch with Sheila at the Regency Deli, just up Second Avenue from 301 East Sixty-fifth. The guy behind the counter saw Mort and wordlessly began making a chicken sandwich on white with salt and pepper only. “That’s amazing,” Sheila said, “I see these guys every morning and I can’t get them to stop putting sugar in my coffee.”
“They’re not dumb. They just want to see you come rushing back in,” announced Mort. Sheila blushed, and after ducking behind the potato chip rack, so did College Boy.
It took almost fifteen minutes for them to walk Sheila the two blocks back to 301 East Sixty-fifth. Don’t be alarmed. For the last year, Mort had been forced to suspend his favorite habit, stopping in the middle of a busy intersection or sidewalk to make a point or take in something said by the people with whom he was walking. He could neither expound nor ponder while in motion. The focus and energy that made Morton Martin Spell such a staggeringly thorough writer could rise up to rivet him at any time, but usually seconds before the light changed.
Mort spent another ten minutes talking with Miguel the doorman (“They kept telling me you was alive, but I dinnent believe it. I say, ‘Mr. Spell, he would have say good-bye to Miguel….’”), while Sheila and College Boy went up to his apartment to fetch his three-wood for the trip back to Salem.
Sheila and College Boy did not dawdle too much. Not enough time for a blast on Mort’s mattress. Besides, he’d be back on the shuttle tomorrow night.
“Would it kill you to fly in three times a week?”
“Your Dan Drake impression is getting better, Sheila.”
Of course it was better. Sheila had been putting in eight hours a week listening to the show. By now, she could have been fluent in Italian or halfway through the audio version of any Herman Wouk novel. Instead, she spent Monday and Friday mornings, six to ten, locked in on Wheels-102, ear cocked past the star Dan Drake for the room tone of his steady studio loyalist and occasional confidant, C. B. Sussman.
“Now, when you used to stop by and give us a hand, didn’t you used to be College Boy?”
“That’s right.”
“So, help me out here. You’re no longer College Boy?”
“You want to call me College Boy, you can. It’s your yard.”
“And don’t you forget that.”
“It’s just that I’ll be fifty-two next month. It’s enough with College Boy.”
“You’re not going to be fifty-two.”
“No…but I was hoping to set an example for Mike Love and Al Jardine.”
> “Good one. Excellent pop analogy. So it’s now C. B.?”
“Yes.”
“Does it bother you that people will associate you with an obsolete, hackneyed method of radio communication?”
“It’s never bothered you.”
“Ahhhh! You understand I have to cut your mike for the remainder of the show.”
“Ye—”
Like every woman who listened to the show, Sheila had a stone crush on Dan Drake. She’d seen the photos and the shots on Letterman, and in the old days, the referral days, she would have never returned his call. Besides that, you really should have your emotional dukes up over someone who believes there is nothing more entertaining, nothing, than him talking on air for twenty hours a week, even if in fact there isn’t. And sure, you had to respect, hell, love anyone who during a phone-in with Pat Buchanan would say, “Now, let me get this straight. You’re anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. And I thought I had good timing….” Sheila’s crush on Dan Drake was one-note. She was infatuated with his fondness for College Boy.
“Tell the folks why you’re here again.”
“Because I fill in the awkward silences with genuine sycophantic laughter?”
“And?”
“And…I have no desire for a career in broadcasting?”
“And?”
“And…I’m the one person in New York who hasn’t annoyed you?”
“Correct. From now on, all we’ll need is that last one.”
College Boy did not have to be great on the radio. Didn’t have to be good. He didn’t even have to be College Boy. No one was counting on him for the late-inning double down the line or the diving catch. The Dan Drake Show needed only one ringer. All that was required of College Boy was his presence. It was the oddest of ways to make three hundred dollars a day, but shit, Dan Drake had paid people twice that not to be in the studio.
That’s right, three hundred dollars a day.
“Well, that’s it. We’ve been ordered by the FCC to close down for the day. I’ll be back tomorrow, along with Larry the news guy.”
“Jason.”
“Right, and some big-time celebrity guests. C. B., you’ll be here, right?”
“No, Dan. I’m only here Monday and Friday.”
“Would it kill you to stop by three times a week?”
“Dan, I-ah…”
“Save it. We all know about the fine charity work you do. This, of course, is not charity, but there’s only enough in the budget for me to have a friend two days a week.”
Dan Drake would use that line often and Sheila would well up every time. College Boy had no idea. He described the whole setup as “half-gig, half-goof, half-guilt.” She was not about to set him straight, other than to say, “He’s lucky to have you.” Which sounded very girlfriendy, but that, like having a place to go once, then twice, then three, and now five times a week, was pretty damn good.
For all its improbability, College Boy took the gig/goof/guilt seriously. Even though he and Dan Drake had never discussed it, he always showed up with at least one scripted two-minute “Dirt King”–like piece. The Dirt King got a rest after two months, even though Dan Drake was far from tired of fucking around with a little-known demi-mobster while every other drive-time show was doing “The Gay Brady Bunch” or some even less inspired contrivance. “Give me all of that you got,” he said, and from that pat came “The Dirt King at the Prison Canteen,” “The Dirt King’s Gardening Tips,” “The Dirt King Writes a Letter to Joe Pesci,” “The Dirt King Receives a Letter from Joe Pesci’s Lawyer.” At best, the bits were cute, short with a couple of decent jokes. At worst, Dan Drake would pretend like he was calling a messenger service to have the script sent over to the Museum of Broadcasting.
“Now, how long did it take you to write that little comedy skit?”
“Five hours.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Hah! Good Lord. Well, I liked the line about Joe Valachi.”
“You wrote that joke before we went on.”
“So, the five hours wasn’t a complete waste.”
That was the other thing Sheila could have loved about Dan Drake. He encouraged, even celebrated, the possibility of failure. So, College Boy began to develop a stable of characters who were but a lame name change removed from their real identities. Julio Rentas, softball ringer/pothead/massage therapist, became Raoul Juntas. Meyer Levitz, shrink/pusher/litigant, became Myron Vantz.
The one character College Boy could never solidify was, of course, the only impression he could do flawlessly. Fielding Herbert, intellectual/man of letters/recluse, never emerged from his legal pad cocoon in any form other than cartoon. And that was unacceptable to College Boy. He thought of having him do editorials, but why? He thought of making him the Wheels-102 station manager and speaking fluent delirium. No, Fielding Herbert was best left alone. Humans are prone to err less in solitude. Too bad. It was a waste of a good impression. And a better story.
A month after they returned from New York, Mort, as instructed, saw Roger Stoeckler, a neurologist at Mass General to whom he’d been referred by Michael Zing. Stoeckler saw him walk in with a gait whose only tentativeness arose from deciding which chair to step around when he shook hands. And the hands? No more tremor than rightfully belonged to any seventy-six-year-old man who never married.
“He’s been doing much much better, Dr. Stoeckler,” said College Boy. “I wish you could have seen him five weeks ago.”
“Is that true, Mr. Spell?”
“Yes it is,” said Mort. “Amazing what a haircut can do.”
“Let’s try this. Cut the Sinemet in half for a week, then stop it altogether. I’ll see you in a month.”
And that was it. They shook hands. If someone had stumbled in at that moment, they would have thought it was the end of a job interview. In a week, there was no more Sinemet. No Sinemet, no Depakote, Wellbutrin in half. Less Pills and his Band of Renown, as Mort now referred to himself. Only his sister Dottie and Claire Concannan got it. Fine.
Dottie Sussman had the best perspective on Mort’s recovery. After supervising the move to Vinnin Estates nine and a half months ago, she had made a point of seeing her brother every ten days. No more, no less, and always with plenty of notice. Unknowingly, it turned out to be just enough space with which to compare her last visit. In the last couple of months, it had proved invaluable to College Boy. Each time she’d leave, Dottie Sussman would have her son walk her to her car and palm him the progress he couldn’t identify. “Mort’s voice is much stronger, don’t you think?” “How long has he been swallowing his medication so easily?” “That check he wrote for the Ouimet Scholarship Fund? That’s his old handwriting. He won awards when we were kids.” “Tell him his elbow is a little cocked on his backswing—like always….”
The only change College Boy could track was at night. Mort still had to go—he was seventy-six, not dead—but the trip to the john was now strictly solo. Five days after they returned from New York the first time, “The Aristocrats” had unceremoniously disbanded. Claire Concannan stayed over the first few Sunday nights College Boy shuttled to Dan Drake, and slept undisturbed (“This sofah’s so much bettah than my excuse for a bed.”). When his gig/goof/guilt moved to twice a week, she’d get up at six o’clock, put up coffee, and head back to her house for a few hours. When she returned, Mort would always greet her with the ultimate compliment: “Thanks for abandoning me. That was damn thoughtful.”
As promising and humane as things had become, neither College Boy nor Mort were prepared for their second visit with Dr. Stoeckler eleven days ago. He was neither an ironic nor a dramatic man, this Roger Stoeckler. But you would have never known it by his first two lines.
Line one: “You’re looking awfully well, Mort.”
Line two: “Mr. Spell, what can I tell you? You don’t have Parkinson’s Disease.”
There was a Line Three, which was both ironic and dramatic (“I’ll see you in three
months, Mr. Spell, at which time I’ll take great pleasure in dismissing you as a patient….”), but, as is the way of these things, it was lost. Lost in the sight of Morton Martin Spell jumping from his chair, taking two laps around the desk, pumping Dr. Stoeckler’s hand, walking out, then poking his head back in.
“Nicely done. Let’s go, doctor.” College Boy stood frozen until he realized, oh, right, I’m doctor.
The next night, Thursday, ten days ago, College Boy was back on the shuttle. Sheila would figure out what this all meant. Why was he still so furious? Sleepless, blind fury. And the most infuriating thing of all, he was the only one still furious. Forget “still,” he was the only one who had ever been furious.
“Mort,” he said that Thursday morning after zero sleep, before Claire Concannan arrived and during a cup of his distinctively less-than-coffee, “be honest. Aren’t you furious?”
“Why?”
“That prick Levitz stole at least a year of your life.”
“Kid, I don’t have time to be angry. I’m too busy thinking about all the things I want to do.”
One afternoon the third week of May, Warren Franks had ferried Mort over to the Willows Country Club to get his three-wood regripped. An hour later, he had a regripped wood and an honorary membership. One of the perks of winning the Bertram Hargan Cup and not dying. The following Thursday, the Thursday after Memorial Day weekend, ten days ago, around five o’clock, Morton Martin Spell hit half a small bucket of balls at the range. His nephew stood far back and swallowed hard. “I would have let you hit some,” Mort said afterward, “but I think the club is still restricted.”
College Boy dropped him back at Vinnin Estates before he left for Logan.
“Nice going, Mort.”
“I think it’s time for you to think about going back to New York.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“I mean going back and staying.” He’d just hit the other half of the small bucket.
“But Mort, you’d be alone.”
“I’m at my best alone, kid. Like Crusoe. Humans are prone to err less in solitude.” Morton Martin Spell, respected journalist and author, underrated uncle, punctuated that last line with archaic flair. He sent a crumpled five-dollar bill through the passenger window of the Buick station wagon. “Caveat rotary, doctor.”
