Broken Sleep (7 page)

Moses flew to Newark and rented a car. He thought about calling a Stuy Town friend who now lived in Paramus, but he didn’t want to try to explain what he didn’t yet understand. He spent the night at the airport Marriott and headed out at 7 A.M. He exited Route 80 at Red Gap, New Jersey, where a sign greeted all visitors HOME TO OVER ONE HUNDRED MILLION B&B CHOCOLATE BARS. From there he drove ten miles to the Collier Layne Health Facility.

Dr. Barnard Ruggles, a small, balding, puckish man in his midfifties, with black-framed glasses and overgrown gray eyebrows, greeted Moses with extreme recalcitrance in his cluttered office. Ruggles explained that he had been treating Salome off and on since 1979 and fully grasped the intricacies of her disorder. Ruggles informed Moses that he needed to take a DNA test and that until he received the results, he wouldn’t discuss any details with him. “Get a room at the DoubleTree in Red Gap. Take a tour of the B&B factory. Eat some chocolate.” He wrinkled up his forehead and rubbed the small mole on the right side of his cheek, which seemed to usher in a complete change of mind. “I may be out of bounds here. I believe you
are Salome’s son. I can hear it in your voice. Without qualification I can say it bears an unmistakable similarity to Alchemy’s. What?” Moses’s face must have revealed both his annoyance and surprise. “Did I say something wrong?”

Moses chose to make it easy for Ruggles. “Second time I’ve heard that in twenty-four hours. Go on, please.”

“If, as we presume, this is true, we will need to talk with serious purpose and you will have even more decisions to make.” Ruggles sighed through his nose and looked askance at his diploma from Dartmouth on the wall to his left, as if it could supply an answer. “This, I am sure, has come as a shock to you, but you will come as a, a”—he paused—“a potentially world-shattering shift to Salome.”

“I expected something like that.”

He nodded. “She had been at Alchemy’s compound in Topanga in California, but she’s back now because she managed to ‘escape’ and get down to the main road, where the police found her shining her flashlight at oncoming cars, throwing rocks at their windshields. She violently resisted them, saying she had a mission to accomplish. Which now, she does not remember.” He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“I see,” Moses said.

“I suggest a man in your condition get some rest.”

“One other question. I assumed Alchemy Savant was paying for this, but you said she was here off and on since the ’70s.”

“I am not at liberty to divulge any particulars. Maybe William Bickley III can. Let me just say a trust was set up by a person of means who must remain anonymous.”

Still maneuvering cautiously, Moses kept his many other questions to himself.

After a visit to the lab, where they swabbed his DNA and drew his blood, Moses got the Collier Layne special at the DoubleTree. He called Jay and his mom, and started to read before soon falling asleep. He spent the next morning brooding at the resort and spa, in the midst of a treacly ex-suburb that made stars of the Barry Manilows and Celine Dions of the world, but also felt like the rural breeding ground for trigger-happy sociopaths like Gary Gilmore. He had less than zero desire to tour the candy factory, but he did make a quick trip the B&B gift shop and bought a box of specialty chocolates for Jay.

After lunch, he lay on the huge bed, aching with exhaustion, wondering,
How many blows can my body absorb and comprehend in such a short time?
This was the not the first, or last, of countless days and nights he would spend obsessing about the lies we are told, tell ourselves, and ultimately choose to believe. Moses steeled himself: Never again would he trust
anyone’s
truth to be unadulterated and without motive.

After his nap, he called Laban Lively. The machine-recorded voice played, and Moses hung up without leaving a message. He phoned Sidonna Cherry and updated her. He asked if she could find out some background on Lively and what she thought about the prospects of finding his father in Brazil.

“Now that he knows you have located him, if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be,” Cherry said with matter-of-fact certainty.

“What if he has any other kids?”

“I can try. If they’re in Brazil, I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Dr. Ruggles called at 4:15. He attempted lightheartedness. “You’re unofficially a Savant. It is still considered preliminary, but I feel confident it will be confirmed.”

A silence wafted, which Moses deciphered as trouble. “I can sense an ‘and’ or a ‘but’ coming. You don’t want me to meet her?”

“Why don’t you come over and we’ll talk.”

In the lobby of Collier Layne, an orderly walked Moses to Ruggles’s office. Moses waited at the doorway. Standing hunched over his desk, shuffling papers, Ruggles barely lifted his head as he asked Moses to sit across from him. Moses sat while Ruggles remained standing.

Moses stiffened, waiting for the next body slam. “We are of the strong opinion that Salome will not be a match for the transplant. We’ve done a preliminary HLA tissue test. We will send samples to your doctor in L.A. You are aware that siblings are the preferred donors. You need to ask Alchemy. Although, as your half brother, there is only a fifty percent chance of a match.”

Moses nodded.

“No doubt you have questions, and I will answer the ones about seeing Salome and any others, but first …” Ruggles now sat down and stared at the four Dubuffet prints on his wall before speaking again. He turned his head and stared balefully into Moses’s eyes from behind his thick glasses. “Salome believes, I have no idea how to put this … that you are not alive … that you were stillborn.”

“What?” Moses shook his head, at first very slowly, then faster and faster until he put his hands on each temple like a
vise, clamping his head in place. His felt as if his entire body was retracting into itself, receding, collapsing into an embryonic ball. He remained wordless for a moment. Finally, he managed to push out a barely audible plea, “Repeat that and explain. Please.”

“Salome, your mother, believes you are dead and buried in a grave in Long Island close to where she was raised.”

Ruggles got up and gave him a bottle of water and a glass. “You want something stronger?”

“How about a shot of liquid Valium?” Ruggles raised his forest of eyebrow hair as if to say, “If you need it …” Moses realized he could in fact give it to him. “No, just kidding.”

Ruggles struggled to formulate his words. “This situation has placed me in the most tenuous professional and ethical position. I hate to be the bearer of such an inconceivable”—he paused—“revelation. What I can’t even presume is if she was told you were stillborn by her adoptive parents or if she was told the truth but doesn’t believe it because the process was so traumatic. She is highly, highly sensitive and alternately elastic and brittle.”

“Did you believe I was dead?”

“We had no reason not to. The Bickleys never informed me until two days ago, and there was no mention of you in the trust, as there is of Alchemy.”

“Is my death part of her delusion?”

“Possibly, yes. With Salome, one never knows. She does not accept ‘psychology’ as existing in the remotest realm of science.”

“Is she sane?”

“That’s a definition question. One’s psychological state is based on a cluster of disparate symptoms that, no matter what any authority claims, we don’t really understand. Thomas Szasz made some good arguments, but mental illness is
no
myth. Salome’s received many reductive diagnoses over the years, ‘severe dissociative disorder,’ ‘depersonalization disorder,’ ‘dissociative fugue,’ ‘dissociative amnesia,’ ‘identity disorder,’ and simple schizophrenia. At first, she was accused of faking to escape arrest for her violent actions. If so, she is an even better actress than her mother.”

Moses’s head tilted forward quizzically.

Ruggles shook his head. “I’m sorry. I should not have said that. In Salome’s first visit here in 1976, the doctors treated her and others with insulin therapy and a primitive form of electroshock, which repulses me.” Ruggles stopped himself, refocused, and continued. “Sorry, I’ve been both too technical and veering off course. As I say, it is difficult for me to make a reductive classification for her. We have adjusted her drug regimen. She certainly has a keen memory when she wants to. The ECT caused some retrograde amnesia and anterograde memory loss, but it has not been significant. She functioned for many years, broke down, and then functioned again. Her accomplishments as an artist are well documented. I believe she can function again. She’s only fifty-seven and physically in excellent health.” Moses did a quick calculation and realized Salome must have been fourteen or fifteen when she had given birth to him. “Right now, with Alchemy being away and Nathaniel Brockton’s physical constraints, her risk of another traumatic …” Ruggles waved his hand and pointed toward
some unknown beyond. “Alchemy, not the Bickleys, is now her guardian and her anchor.”

“Where is he?”

“At a Zen monastery in New Mexico. He’s in the middle of a three-month retreat. It was communicated to him that she is back here, but he’s taken a vow of silence, which I suggest you interrupt immediately.”

“I’m inclined to agree. Let me think about it overnight.”

“The question arises: Should you meet and be introduced to Salome now? Should I tell her? I am at a loss. In all the years I’ve been practicing, and I have experience with extreme and rare cases, never before have I encountered such a conundrum. If you want to meet her, I’ll need at least a few days to prepare myself. And her.” Ruggles rubbed the mole on his cheek with his right index finger and shook his head as if to acknowledge,
You don’t have the time
.

“Meet her? Maybe. No. I think I’ll find Alchemy, and then, who knows? I need to avoid any more blows until, well, things are clearer. I’m not sure it is best for her. Or me. Can I
see
her and maybe …?”

“Yes, of course.” Ruggles looked at his watch and leaned back in his chair, relieved to be able to put this confrontation off. “She’s probably taking her before-dinner walk around the grounds. I can casually introduce you as a visitor.”

Ruggles led Moses outside. They walked along a tree-lined pebble path until Ruggles pointed. “That’s her.” Ten yards ahead of them, a woman ambled as if she were strolling freely in a park rather than a walled-in compound, head angled toward the sky. “If we speed up a bit we’ll catch her.”

“No, let’s follow her a minute.”

Moses began to sweat profusely; his knees jellied and his body trembled. Fear overwhelmed his curiosity. He grabbed Ruggles by the arm to steady himself. “I can’t. I can’t now.”

Ruggles, grim-faced, nodded. “You can come back anytime.”

Moses drove back to the hotel, still feeling emotionally unmoored from the guideposts, internal and external, that had marked and peopled his world.

At the hotel he called Jay. “Guess what? I got two moms. Both are living on worlds they created. One includes me and one doesn’t.”

“You should call the one that includes you. She is not in good shape. She feels neglected.” Jay and Hannah had spent the morning and afternoon together, and Jay went home after a late lunch.

“What? Why? I called last night and you saw her today.”

“It’s not rational, but she’s afraid to lose you.”

“Jay, I am so worn out. I feel so beaten down. I feel like giving up.”

“NO! You can’t.” Jay panicked. “You can’t. It would destroy your mom. And
me
. Please, Moses.”

Jay’s fear of losing Moses was colored by the loss of her mother who, when Jay was twenty-three, began to slide into the netherworld of Alzheimer’s. Jay had made plans to move back to Miami to be with her mother and to help her father and brother run the art gallery. Jay’s belief in the vows of “for
better or worse” were shattered when her father put his wife in a home and began dating one of her nurses. Jay gave up her plans to move back to Miami. Her mother remained in the “home,” too physically strong to succumb yet unable to recognize Jay when she made one of her now rare visits.

When Moses’s illness struck, Jay resisted the notion that the world could be so unjust. Better, she often thought, if he would flee to another woman’s arms than lose him to the sheathing arms of illness and death. She swore unswerving devotion no matter how debilitating his illness became.

Moses understood he had to deny his urge to fade away into nothingness. He had battled with those desires before, and he knew this was the one dreadful fantasy he should never raise with Jay. “I’m sorry. Don’t worry. Please. I’m tired. I need to sleep and not think. I’ll call my mom now, but you have to take care of her until I get back.”

Jay seemed calmer. Moses intended to fly to Albuquerque, find Alchemy, and hope that he’d agree to help.

After they hung up, Moses phoned Hannah. He reassured her that he loved her and all was well and nothing had changed between them. He didn’t want her to feel suddenly peripheral. “Look, I’ll be home in a few days. Please wait.”

Perplexed and overwhelmed, the idea of peaceful surrender appealed to Moses. Nothing like the imminence of death to present one with an existential crisis, to raise questions about meanings and philosophies, God’s existence and faith. Moses flashed back to the vacant glare of a man who, when Moses
was speaking at the Skirball Center on his work about the children of survivors of the Holocaust, confronted him after the talk. He spoke with a slight Yiddish accent. “You are smart with words, like him.” He looked at his hands, which held a copy of
Man’s Search for Meaning
. “You make up words and theories to justify the emptiness inside you that knows there is no meaning and there is no God.” Moses fumbled to respond. The man, with a disdainful shake of his head, turned away.

Moses still had no response. He didn’t understand the meaning in his preverbal drive to meet his biological father, and now his mother. Neither endless hours of therapy nor reading an array of august thinkers delivered any eternal truths from the Tree of Knowledge. No—he felt as if he stood beneath some emotional Tower of Babel and would forever struggle for answers. He cursed himself for possessing no language to explain his feelings, or even understand his own questions.