Life After Genius (41 page)

“You’re right,” his father says. “I screwed up. I admit it. I sensed that something was wrong and didn’t pursue it. I told myself that time was all Martin and Jewel needed to heal. Obviously, I was wrong.” Then he lifts his eyes and adds, “So now it’s your turn, Teddy. Tell me what happened up there at that university.”

Mead meets his father’s gaze. Eye-to-eye. He has never before looked at him like this. Straight on. Man-to-man. His heart thumps in his chest, so loud that Mead can barely hear himself when he says, “I befriended the wrong guy, Dad. I made a deal with the devil and now I’m going to have to pay the price.”

“What guy?”

“Herman Weinstein.”

“You mean that boy your mother and I met? I thought he was your friend.”

“So did I. Or so I told myself. But really I just used him.”

“Used him? That doesn’t sound like you, Teddy, that doesn’t sound like you at all. Tell me what happened. I want to hear the whole story. From the start.”

But before Mead can utter even a single word, the front door flies open and Uncle Martin comes sailing through it.

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE
.” This seems to be the only thing Uncle Martin knows how to say. “Get out of my house.” Mead’s dad tries to explain what happened. The chain of events that led up to now. How Jewel called his house by mistake, trying to get a hold of Martin at the store. How Teddy answered the phone then came over here to help her unclog the drain in the tub. “Get out of my house,” Martin says and Mead’s dad explains that Teddy then called him at the store, concerned about his aunt. (Concerned, that’s the word his father uses. Concerned.) That Jewel is now sleeping upstairs. “Get out of my house,” Martin says and Mead’s dad explains how ashamed he is, that he had no idea what was going on over here. “Get out of my house.” That he wishes Martin had felt he could reach out to his brother for help. “Get out of my house.” That he believes Jewel needs more than just time to heal. “I SAID GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

Mead’s dad then tells his brother that he thinks Jewel should be admitted to a mental hospital. “Where she can get counseling so she can get better,” he says, all calm and cool. As if he were trying to talk Martin in off a window ledge.

Mead’s uncle goes all silent, like the eye of a hurricane. He looks into the living room to his right and then into the dining room to his left. The front door is still open, and behind him, out by the curb, Dr. Breininger emerges from the white ambulance, slides a gurney out of the rear of the vehicle, and begins to make his way toward the house. He’s about halfway up the walk when Martin explodes, his right arm sweeping across the dining room table and sending the green beans almondine, the beef stroganoff, the chicken noodle casserole, the macaroni-and-cheese, the fruit salad, and hundreds of black ants sailing through the air. The walls become an instant work of abstract art. Jackson Pollock would be in awe. Bowls and plates shatter into pieces. Tupperware bounces and rolls across the floor. Martin winds up for a second assault on the table but before he can inflict any more damage Mead’s dad jumps into action and wraps his arms like a straitjacket around his brother. A struggle ensues. Martin scoops up a handful of whipped potatoes and mashes it into his brother’s face. But Mead’s dad refuses to let go and both of them end up on the floor, his uncle pinned under his father. And then it ends. Just like that. Martin stops fighting and goes limp, his anger having suddenly converted into tears. Mead turns away then. Not because he is embarrassed by his uncle’s display of emotion but because he understands, intuitively, the importance of maintaining one’s dignity at a time like this.

While the two grown men are still lying on the floor, Dr. Breininger sticks his head through the open front door and says, “Excuse me, but can someone please come help me get this gurney up the steps?”

M
EAD’S MOTHER GOES WITH THEM
, with Aunt Jewel and Uncle Martin and Dr. Breininger to the mental hospital in St. Louis. Mead’s father called her while, upstairs, Martin and the good doctor roused Jewel from sleep and got her onto the gurney. She arrived in what seemed like seconds. Didn’t even put on lipstick first. She held on to Jewel’s hand as the gurney was rolled across the front lawn, then sat in the back of the ambulance and wouldn’t let go. Mead tries to remember the last time his mother held his hand like that and, for a second, feels jealous. But only for a second. Then he picks up the rubber gloves his father threw on the floor and turns his attention to a more important matter. Namely, cleaning up the mess that used to be his aunt and uncle’s home.

He starts where he and his father left off: with the kitchen sink. The drain belches a few times as murky water pours down its throat, then Mead refills the basin, squirting pink liquid detergent into a stream of clear tap water. Hot water. Hot enough to scorch bare skin. He soaps up a plate, rinses it off, and sets it in the drying rack.

His father steps up beside him, lifts the plate out of the rack, and begins drying it. Mead grabs a second dish, soaps it up, and waits for his father to ask him to expound on his earlier confession. To spill his guts. To confess his sins. Only his father doesn’t say a word. He just sets the clean plate in the cupboard and waits for the next one, waits for Mead to start talking when he is good and ready.

God, how Mead hates that. How his father always has to play the role of Mr. Patience. Mr. Sensitivity. Mr. Understanding. Mr. Holier-Than-Thou. A bubble of anger wells up in his chest but Mead fights to keep it down because it is inappropriate. For another time or place. Not now. Not when his father is still upset about his brother. And Jewel. Mead is being petty. Childish. He knows this but he can’t help it. He tells the bubble to go away but that just makes it grow bigger. Mead feels as if he is going to burst. As if he can’t breathe. Rinses off the plate and throws it into the drying rack.

“Easy there,” his father says. “You don’t want to break it.”

“Why!” Mead yells. “Why didn’t you just accept the fucking scholarship? There isn’t another human being on the face of this earth who would turn his nose up at free money. Why you? Did you do it to make me feel indebted to you? Was that your way of getting back at me for not becoming an undertaker? Would it really have been such a goddamned terrible thing to do? Why? Tell me why you did it!”

His father sets down the dishtowel. “That’s what you think? That I refused the university’s offer of a scholarship to punish you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know what to think, not anymore.”

Mead’s father pulls out a chair and sits down at the kitchen table as if he is suddenly very tired. As if the wind has been knocked out of his lungs. Mead feels horrible. Why did he just say that? Why is he tormenting the poor man? After all it isn’t his father who betrayed him; it’s Herman. He should apologize. Take it back. Beg his father for forgiveness. But he does none of these things. He just stands, frozen in place, waiting for a response.

“I suppose that I was upset,” his father says. “At first, when I first realized that you wouldn’t be following in my footsteps. It’s every father’s dream, of course, to have a son just like himself. But I knew better. You see, it was my father’s dream too. He wanted me to be a carpenter. My very first memory is of whacking my thumb with a hammer. I think I was three at the time.” He shakes his head, remembering. “I never got the hang of it. Never much enjoyed that kind of thing. Martin had an easier time of it. He was more like our father. Good with physical things like hammers and saws. They got along great. That is until Martin hit his teens, when he got it in his head to become a ballplayer.”

“What?” Mead says. “You mean Uncle Martin wanted to be a baseball player? Like Percy?”

His father laughs. “Ironic, no?”

“Don’t tell me: Henry Charles wouldn’t let him.”

“It never came to that. Martin wasn’t as good as Percy. But it was a bone of contention between them for quite a few years. And, I am ashamed to say, I took advantage of that fissure in their relationship. I ingratiated myself with my father the only way I knew how, by taking an active interest in the other half of his business.”

He stops talking and rises out of the chair. Picks up the discarded dishtowel and gestures for Mead to continue washing. Which Mead obediently does. Picks up another plate, soaps it, and hands it to his father, wondering where this is going, impatient for an answer to his question. But he keeps his mouth shut —for a change —because Mead hasn’t spoken with his father like this in years. No wait, make that ever.

As his father dries the plate, he continues to talk.

“I hated everything about it: the formaldehyde, the dead bodies, and all those sad people. I was throwing up every day. I must’ve lost ten pounds that first year. But I never let on to my old man how miserable I was because that was the only way I knew to get his nod of approval, by working alongside of him.” He places the plate on the cupboard shelf. Nods at the sink. Mead washes another dish and hands it to him. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I never wanted you to think you had to be a certain way to gain my approval. I guess that’s also why I turned down the scholarship. Because it was important for me to pay for your education myself. To prove to myself that I could be a better father to you than my old man was to me. That I could fully support my son no matter what vocation he chose.” He sets the dried plate in the cupboard and waits for the next one.

“I wish you would’ve told me all this three years ago.”

“I didn’t realize it was necessary.”

“It wasn’t,” Mead says and picks up another dish. “It just would’ve been nice to know.”

W
HEN THE PHONE RINGS
, Mead’s father answers it expecting Martin or Mead’s mother to be on the other end with an update on Jewel. But as it turns out, it’s neither of them. “I have to go out,” he says after hanging up. “Mrs. Schinkle just passed.”

“Now?” Mead says. “She couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?” But he is only kidding. Or at least half-kidding.

“I’d like you to stay here,” his father says as he pulls on his jacket. “I’d like someone to be here when Martin gets home. To stay with him overnight.”

“Sure thing, Dad,” Mead says.

His father starts out the front door, then turns back and says, “I still want us to sit down and talk, Teddy. I want to know everything.”

“Okay, Dad.”

His father looks at him a moment longer, then steps outside and closes the door.

M
EAD IS CLEANING THE LIVING ROOM
when his uncle comes through the front door. He waits to see if his mother will come in behind him but she doesn’t. Mead pulls back the curtain and looks out just as she is driving away. A wave of anger rolls over him. Surely she knows that he is still here. Mead’s father must have told her. She could’ve at least poked her head inside and asked how he was doing. If he needed any help. But no, she’s still mad at him for coming home. If Mead wants to get her sympathy, he will first have to graduate from college.

He drops the curtain and glances at his uncle, who is hanging his jacket in the front closet. Not knowing what to say —or if he should say anything at all —Mead goes back to doing what he has been doing for the past four hours. Cleaning. He empties an ashtray into a lipstick-stained coffee cup then sets the ashtray back down on the table.

“That’s not where that goes,” his uncle says.

Mead looks up. “I’m just cleaning. You can put everything back where you want tomorrow.” But as soon as he starts for the kitchen, Martin steps over to the table, picks up the ashtray, and moves it six inches to the left. It irks Mead but he lets it go. After all, this is his uncle’s house and he can put his stuff wherever he damn well pleases.

After emptying the ashes into the garbage can, Mead soaps, rinses, and then sets the coffee cup in the drying rack. Martin comes into the kitchen and sits at the table. Mead thinks to ask his uncle how it went but he already knows the answer. Not well. Nothing like that ever goes well. And since Mead can think of no good reason to make his uncle relive the experience, he says nothing. Instead, he picks up the dishtowel and starts putting away the remaining dishes.

“That’s not where those go,” his uncle says. “You’re doing it all wrong. The cups go over there and the plates are supposed to go over there.” And he gets up and starts emptying out the cupboard, stacking the clean, dry dishes on the dirty, wet counter.

“Leave it be,” Mead says. “It’s late. We can move stuff around tomorrow.”

But Martin ignores him and keeps pulling dishes out of the cupboard, stacking them on the counter. “You’re getting everything all dirty again,” Mead says, growing more and more annoyed even though he knows he has no right to. “Stop, please.” But Martin keeps going. Even when he runs out of room. He stacks the dishes too high and then one of them falls into the sink of soapy water. “Uncle Martin,” Mead says. “Stop. You’re making a mess. I just cleaned all these dishes.” And he grabs his uncle’s wrist. Martin yanks it free and, when he does, the dish in his hand falls to the floor and shatters. “Goddamn it, Uncle Martin. I just finished cleaning this place up!”

The instant the words are out of his mouth, Mead regrets them. Shit. He waits for his uncle to get mad, to call Mead an ungrateful spoiled brat. Instead, he looks up and says, “It’s all wrong. The room they put her in, the walls are white. Pink. The walls should be pink; Jewel loves the color pink. And there are no curtains on the windows. It’s cold. It was a cold room. How is she supposed to get better in a cold, white room?”

“I don’t know,” Mead says, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck. Shit. His uncle should have checked into the room next to his aunt. Why didn’t Mead’s mother make him? He thinks to call his father, to call for help. But he can’t. The man already has his hands full. And Mead sure as hell isn’t going to call his mother. Shit. He’s just going to have to deal with this on his own; something Mead feels woefully underqualified to do. But this isn’t some rich, spoiled kid at school he’s dealing with here. It’s his uncle. And so Mead takes a deep breath and lunges ahead. “It’s a hospital, Uncle Martin. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”