The Digger's Rest (6 page)

“
When she came home and told me, I
could have killed her. ‘That was half our rent for the month.’ I
shouted at her. But looking back, I’m so sorry now that I did. She
was my Mellie and it was just like her to do something like that. I
miss her so much,” Marj cried, breaking into quiet sobs of grief
that she must have been holding onto for days.

Jack went to her, put his arm around her and
gave her his handkerchief. She wiped her face then poured more
coffee. “The next year, Through My Child’s Eyes was released and
made her first album a hit, then the following year Poor in New
York at Christmas made her second album a hit and became a holiday
classic. I went back to Ohio and got married. But Mellie never
forgot how we struggled and she raised Mitch the same way.

“
Every year after that she used her
fame the way she wanted, giving concerts at Christmas and taking
Mitch with her to bring the money to homeless shelters and work in
the kitchens. And you know, for a young boy, you would think it
might have scared him, but it didn’t. It was just the opposite. He
loved every minute of it and loved her even more for it. He loved
being with her. I don’t know what’ll happen to him now that she’s
gone.” Marj shook her head and began to cry again. “I know he’ll
have plenty of money now, from the trust and the royalties from
Mellie’s music, but he’ll be so alone without her. I just came back
to New York a few months ago when I found out she was sick. I’ve
only seen Mitch when I came to visit on holidays and summers since
he was a baby and I have to go back to my own children
soon.”

Jack got that ‘father’ feeling again and his
mouth opened without even a thought about what he was saying. “He
won’t be alone. I’ll look after him. He’s my friend and…I care
about him a great deal. I’ll take good care of him. I give you my
word. He’ll never have to be alone.”

Marj looked up at Jack and nodded. “I could
tell that from the way you stayed with him at the funeral and came
here with us, the way he knew he could lean on you. He’ll need that
so much now, Dr. Edgeworth, now more than ever.” But Jack didn’t
know at the time how true those words would become.

After Marjaree went back to Ohio, he took
hold of Mitch’s life, guided him through everything. He seemed to
be coming along well enough. He was quieter, sadder, and lonelier,
of course, no matter how hard Jack tried to include him in
everything in his own life.

Looking back though, he should’ve seen it
coming. The signs were all there, he just didn’t know enough to
recognize them in time.

Right after Thanksgiving, Mitch started
making excuses every time they went out to eat, not hungry, already
eaten. It went on like that for weeks but Jack didn’t see it. He
could kick himself every time he thought about it since then, the
kid was starving himself.

Whether it was just a loss of appetite from
depression or intentional deprivation, it didn’t really matter. He
was starving, and Jack took it on himself as guilt. Guilt for
promising to take care of him and failing; guilt for watching Mitch
get thinner every day but not seeing it.

In the end the only thing that saved them
both that Christmas Eve was Jack’s little voice, the one that came
to him at the party. It got into him at the funeral and had stayed
with him ever since, that “connected” feeling parents get when they
know their child is in trouble.

Jack took a deep breath as he sat in his
chair that afternoon in his office, secured only by the fact that
he’d just seen Mitch leave his office and knew he was safe before
he could let himself go back that Christmas Eve.

He thanked God every day for that little
voice because, had it not spoken to him and urged him so loudly, so
repeatedly, or if he’d let that selfish, whining wife of his delay
him even a few minutes longer in his entry hall that evening, Mitch
would have been dead and Jack would have been lost forever, so when
Mitch opened his eyes that night in the hospital and asked him,
“What’s going to happen to me now?” Jack gave him the only answer
possible. “You’re coming home with me,” swearing to himself that he
would never, ever be so lax in his attention to the boy again, and
he kept his word, to both of them, ever since.

As soon as Mitch was able to leave the
hospital, Jack took him back to his townhouse. Annette and the
girls had gone back to Philly by then, so he did the only thing he
could think of, he paid off Mitch’s lease and had his things moved
to Park Avenue so he could come there straight from the hospital
and never have to go back.

From that day on he watched every move Mitch
made, every meal he ate, knew where he was every minute of the day.
He counted himself lucky because they both spent so much time at
the school and the Museum, it wasn’t as difficult as it could have
been had Mitch been the deceptive type or had interests different
from Jack’s.

The first year was the toughest. For weeks
Jack had to listen to Mitch cry himself to sleep almost every night
through his bedroom door, but at least he didn’t have that worry.
He’d had the locks removed from all the doors in the townhouse
before Mitch came to stay, but he really didn’t get that feel from
him anymore anyway.

Mitch ate properly and Jack got him a card so
Mitch could use his gym membership, which Mitch seemed to take to
easily. And he could confess it to himself now, all these years
later, he coddled the boy shamelessly, like he was the most
precious thing in the world, never for a moment pausing to regret
it, and more importantly, it worked.

Mitch’s body grew steadily stronger and his
academics were never better. It was worth it. Then when Mitch
graduated, Jack was so proud. He clapped louder than his upbringing
would have normally allowed and louder than anyone else in the
room. He even whistled as Mitch got called up to take his diploma.
From there, he got Mitch admitted to his graduate program at
Columbia, which was a given since it was Jack’s alma mater, and an
internship at the Museum, another given. Then after Mitch received
his doctorate, Jack rewarded him by buying him a place at the
Dakota.

The separation tugged at him, but he knew in
his heart that it was time for his broken bird to fly the nest and
took his consolation in the fact that he’d intentionally found him
the place at the Dakota because it was less than ten blocks away
from his townhouse on Park, running distance if he had to, but by
then that particular memory was just that, a memory.

They spent the next ten years searching the
secret parts of the world for art and ancient relics they could
bring back to the Museum, digging in pits everywhere from Jordan in
the Middle East to Machu Picchu high in the Andes Mountains.

He would never forget the first time he took
Mitch to a local tapas bar in Spain’s glorious medieval city of
Toledo to see the El Grecos; the two of them drunk as sailors on
shore leave, swaggering their way back to the hotel pretending to
be Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, tilting at windmills as they
stumbled down the dark narrow streets of the city

He loved remembering the first time he
actually got Mitch into a deep pit to uncover a buried Roman
settlement in Andalusia in the south; hearing him excitedly call
out, “Jack! Jack! Look what I found,” as he popped his head up out
of the trench, his face covered in mud, his hands and arms caked
with it as he held up an Ancient Roman bust of Mars, fully intact,
from the time of Hadrian; the shining excitement in those beautiful
green, feline eyes, his mother’s eyes. His smile beaming out like a
spotlight from behind his muddy face like a small boy covered in
paint who’d just brought home his first finger painting from
school, “Look, Dad, look what I made!”

But that all ended when Jack was offered the
Director of Antiquities position at the Museum. He couldn’t really
turn it down; he wasn’t getting any younger and it was a power and
prestige position, so a desk jockey he became.

The move worked out for both of them. A year
later he gave Mitch his own department where they could both stick
to spending the Museum’s money to expand the Museum’s ancient art
collection by acquiring some of the world’s greatest examples of
classical sculpture with Mitch finding his feet by concentrating on
what he loved most, pre-Renaissance western art; but alas, not
allowing them to play in the dirt together anymore.

The next time Mitch worried him wasn’t his
fault. It was nothing that he’d done, but something that was done
to him. He came stomping into Jack’s living room one evening about
seven years before having just come back from giving a lecture to
the undergraduates from Harvard at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
and threw a crumpled magazine on the table in front of him. “Look!”
was all Mitch could spout. The expression on his face spoke the
rest; anger, hurt, betrayal, like the scar over an old wound had
been ripped open again violently, pain mixed with…shock, mixed
with…hate. His eyes burned with it. Jack picked up the
magazine.

“
What is it?”

“
Just look!” Mitch repeated, shouting
and pointing to the magazine in Jack’s hand, tears of anger welling
in his eyes, which at that moment looked more like his mother’s
than ever. Jack un-crumpled the magazine, looked at the cover, and
understood immediately. The photo on the cover was of Julian
Bramson, the third, sitting regally in a stately antique armchair
with a handsome young blonde man, about Mitch’s age, standing
behind him with his hand on the old man’s shoulder, Julian Bramson,
the fourth. The larger caption read, “A Boston Dynasty Continues,”
followed by the underlying caption. “Julian Bramson IV announces
his candidacy for Congress.”

By then Mitch was pacing back and forth
across the room ranting and raving in a way Jack had never seen
before, much less believe Mitch was capable of, and using language
Jack had never once heard come out of him. “Mother-fucking,
son-of-abitch. Stinking lousy rotten…rotten. I hope you fucking
die, die, Die!” he screamed at the top of his voice, pointing
violently at the cover of the magazine, tears starting to stream
down his face. “My mother is dead and that son of a bitch is going
to try and make that fucking idiot president when I never even got
a fucking birthday card…like I never existed. He comes down to the
Village and drops a bundle on a poor flower child then runs off
pretending it never happened, then tries to convince himself and
the world that that…that vapid, pointless creature is his first
son! You’ve gotta help me, Jack. Help me hurt him…like he hurt my
mother and me, please,” Mitch pleaded as he sat down close by him
on the sofa, putting his head in his hands.

Jack didn’t even have to think about what to
do, his father’s instinct told him exactly what was needed. He
needed to stand up for his boy, and he did.

He spent the next two weeks on the telephone
pulling in every favor he was owed from all over Europe to get the
most important work of medieval art in the world on loan to the
Met, the Bayeux Tapestry, for Mitch to stage. It would be the
biggest art exhibit to hit New York since King Tut was there in the
‘70s. Then he pulled in every favor he was owed in New York to make
sure the press coverage would be extraordinary, so that spring,
when the Met opened the Gala with The Bayeux, Mitchell Bramson’s
name was on the lips of everyone who was anyone in the
international art world.

The crowning achievement was when Time
magazine asked for Mitch and the tapestry to be their cover for the
next month. The photograph was glorious. A radiantly handsome,
young Dr. Mitchell Woodward Bramson, daring and fascinating with
his long chestnut hair, feline green eyes and gold earrings,
standing boldly against of the astounding background of the
tapestry, his arms folded, his expression triumphant. The caption
read, “Dr. Bramson’s Bayeux.”

Even more compelling was the interview and
photo array inside featuring the same lovely photo of Melanie
Woodward sitting with her guitar on a park bench in her hippy
clothes that was run with her obituary, and when the interviewer
asked Mitch if he was in any way related to the Bramson’s of
Boston, he cleverly deflected it by responding merely that his “. .
.mother was Melanie Woodward Bramson and that he was very pleased
to announce a collection of her best and most famous songs was due
to be released shortly in a three CD set, with interviews from some
of her closest musical contemporaries,” and left it at that.

Jack had done his boy proud and Mitch had
made Jack proud of him. That Boston Monthly rag and its cover were
no match for either of them. Julian Bramson the fourth may have
gotten a congressional seat bought for him by his father, but Jack
had made Mitch an international sensation with dozens of magazine
articles and television interviews. Let Julian Bramson the Third
take that and shove it up his tight fucking ass.

So what if Mitch was a little wild at times.
In Jack’s eyes he could never really do any wrong and had proven
himself to be the biggest draw the Museum had ever had, in terms of
dollars and reputation. His exhibits never failed to bring in the
press and celebrities from around the world vying to stand next to
him to add a little intellectual cachet to their auras.

He had become a force to be reckoned with in
the museum world, taking it out of the stuffy and inaccessible and
putting it back where it belonged, in the hands of everyone and
anyone who wanted to appreciate it. And even though he’d hit the
big time with the Bayeux and again later with his Joan of Arc and
Six Wives of Henry the Eighth exhibits, his own personal pride came
from a much lesser known program he’d forced down the throat of the
board of trustees, taking himself on a small lecture circuit to the
poorest high schools in New York City to teach the most
impoverished of inner city kids how even their world could be
touched and brightened by the beauty of art and the riches of
knowledge. He was his mother’s son, after all.