The Farewell Symphony (47 page)

Butler became more and more languishing in the presence of such solar energy, as though he were a good Christian Southerner fatigued by the lung power of a Yankee huckster He'd wanted Eddie to be his friend, but by that he meant he'd wanted Eddie to exclaim over him and to promote his career. Famous writers, of course, are not on the lookout for neglected talent. They're more concerned about how to ship all those Seroukis paintings back from Athens or how to frll the chipped molar, upper left. Philip's money, competence and generosity far outweighed his boisterous habit of saying unpleasant truths—a habit that, as the mood struck him, he could easily reverse. He once even said to me, "You're my favorite prose writer," the sort of lunatic compliment ever)' struggling writer hugs to his chest even though he knows he must set it instantly aside, much as an ugly girl who's received a love letter looks at the postmark to make sure it wasn't mailed on April the first.

Philip liked everyone, or if he didn't he said so, loudly, whereas Butler was worried about being taken up by unsuitable people whom later he wouldn't be able to shake. Philip came sauntering out of a new movie shouting, "Pretty- ghastly, huh?" whereas Buder was never ready to deliver a snap judgment and needed to submit the experience to what he called "the first freshets of my brooding."

Maddening as I found the priestly airs he gave himself, all I had to do was spend a long evening with him and soon he was the sort of Southerner I loved in my mother and grandmother—knee-slapping, country wise, fiercely independent. Suddenly I saw that so much of the strain and pretentiousness he embodied derived from the provincial's unease in New York, a discomfort I myself felt. My social insecurity was spurred to life when a Swedish acquaintance of mine said, "It's a shame you can't live in Europe for a while. It would give you some of the polish you need." His advice struck me as absurd—wasn't I considered almost archaically courtly by most of my friends? But the suggestion did haunt me. I thought maybe he meant my off-color remarks and saucy questions, or maybe he meant my sweaty clownishness, my determination to amuse.

My sister phoned me. "Brother, I'm doing better I'm living in a sort of

halfway house and I think I'll be able to go back to graduate school next spring and finish up."

"Oh, Anne, that's marvelous. Mother told me you're still not talking to her."

Anne suddenly flared up. "Don't put any—you can't imagine—I—" and she lowered her voice and added wearily, "I just can't hack hen"

Secretly I envied her the exemption she was enjoying from our mother's own kind of madness.

"You do what's best for you," I said. "When Mother complains about your rejection I point out that at least you're alive. I say, 'Don't forget that just a few months ago she was suicidal. Wouldn't you rather have her alive and incommunicado than dying and on the line?' "

Anne laughed: "I'll bet she wouldn't, Brulley."

I laughed too. I said, "Everyone praises her for being a survivor. At least she praises herself But I think she'd push us overboard in order to grab the last lifeboat for herself"

"Amen. How's she doing?"

"Fine. That slimy boyfriend of hers is up at her house every weekend and when they're not fucking they're praying or cooking. She loves him for his prayers." We laughed. I said, "You?"

"I can't stay sober, not even with two AA meetings a day."

"Try Antabuse. It's a pill that makes you vomit if you take a drink."

"AA doesn't approve of it."

"Fuck them."

Over the next few months I kept checking in on my sister. With Antabuse she was able to stop drinking and get a taste of sobriety. She had to report to a pharmacist every morning who made her swallow the Antabuse in his presence. After that she was safe for the day.

My own drinking worried me. I never kept any liquor in the house but when I went out, which I did every night, I inevitably got drunk. A guy I knew sent me a case of California wine and I looked at it with horror when it was delivered, because I knew I'd drink it all in a week. I'd lie in bed, holding one eye shut, and read German philosophy and reach over to uncork the second bottle of the evening. Drink is supposed to ease pain. With me it broke down all sense of time (is time pain?) and released me into a soft, floating cloud of classical music, a swimming contentment, heady reading. I'd lie in my dark, narrow room, the door open, listening for Kevin to come home. Sometimes I'd hear his voice and the laughter of other men.

The Farewell Symphony

One evening in winter my sister called. "Honey, I can't bear it that Gabriel is still in the mental hospital."

"Is he still there?"

"Yes, it's so strange. You know, all three kids have been living with their father and stepmother ever since my last attempt. The younger kids grin and bear it, but Gabriel is so rebellious. You know he always scared me, even when he was a baby. I could never bond with him. I always felt he was this adult, dangerous man, just litde. He was always built like a Uttle boxcar. For years he was fine. He was even a Little Leaguer. He and his dad were real pals. But then, after the divorce . . . Oh, I feel so guilty." She began to cry.

I'd been in therapy for so many years that I didn't rush in to comfort her. I let her "experience her pain," as we said.

"Anyway, Gabriel's just rotting in that hospital. The shrink keeps them all in a lock-up unit. They don't study there's an elaborate token system of merits and demerits. The shrink appears once a day like Louis XTV strolling through the Hall of Mirrors. The kids vie to catch his attention, beg a favor, receive his blessing. What an ego trip for that merde. . . ."

"What should we do?"

"Well, Gabriel's case hasn't been presented in court because he is his father's ward and his father has put him there. But if I challenge it—you see, my lawyer says that I can get what's called a 'release order' and if no one arranges for a court hearing within five days he'll just be released to anyone who's there—me—willing to take him into custody."

"But then what?" I asked.

"I'll put him on a plane and send him to you."

"Okay. I'll raise him then?"

"Yeah."

"Okay"

"I'll be there to receive Gabriel. Then I'll rush him in a cab to tlie airport. I don't have a ticket. . . ."

"Don't worry. I'll have a prepaid ticket waiting at the counter as soon as you give me the details."

When I told Ke\in he just laughed and said, "Great, I've always wanted to be a mom."

I'd agreed so glibly to taking in my nephew because I thought it was stylish and gallant to make split-second decisions, just as I

thought farewells should always be cut short, and my idea of elegant haste had ofTended more than one person. But as I later contemplated the responsibility of supporting Gabriel I panicked. Td set up my whole life so that I wouldn't have any responsibilities, but already my passion for Kevin had caused me to give up my hundred-dollar-a-month roach-trap for this four-hundred-dollar floor-through. I often said I wasn't rich enough to be heterosexual and that children were beyond my means. Now I feared I'd become so burdened with expense that I'd never write again.

In our family we never met each other at the airport; as our mother said, "We all travel too much to waste our time like that." The day in early January when Gabriel arrived was no exception. His mother had called to tell me that the release order had worked like a charm since her ex-husband was, as predicted, too passive to challenge it. Anne said Gabriel was in the plane and on his way. He had a twenty-dollar bill to pay for his New York taxi.

I'd bought a single bed for him and put him up in the maid's room next to the kitchen; his room had a half-sink and mirror and a litde built-in closet. Whereas my own sheets I changed only every two weeks, now that I had a . . . child, I was determined to do everything properly. I wanted to run a household that was beyond reproach since I was now responsible for the welfare of a young person. I'd laid out a big towel, a litde towel and a washcloth for him.

I hadn't seen Gabriel for several years. When I saw him getting out of his taxi below I rushed down to help him up with his bag. As soon as I got a good look at him across the street I said to myself "Oh. That's it," for his face was covered with acne, the deep, red, quilted kind. I thought. No wonder he lurks in the basement and only emerges at night. He doesn't want anyone to see him.

I embraced him and brought him upstairs. He looked exhausted. His nails were black and ragged and he stank of cigarettes. Kevin was nowhere in sight. I took Gabe on a tour of the apartment. "You may notice it's seriously underfurnished," I said, smiling at him. I was glad he wasn't handsome, at least not for the moment, given his acne; I won't be attracted to him, I thought, and won't have to fight temptation.

We sat in the kitchen and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. He didn't take off his overcoat, a heavy grey and white tweed that looked as though it had been picked up at Goodwill. His hair was dirty and matted on one side, where he must have slept on it in the plane. I decided I wouldn't fuss at him in any way. Nor would I forget that he must be intimidated by the big city,

The Farewell Symphony

freedom, me. My plan would be to challenge him slowly and through the smallest possible increments urge him to return to life.

I ga\e him an omelette and salad for lunch; he barely touched the eggs and completely ignored the greens. .Always afraid of gaining weight I never ate much during the day. but the day before I'd stocked the fridge and cupboards for the first time ever.

"Where's the TV?'" Gabriel asked.

"We don't have one. Do you want me to get you one? I mean, do you ha\e to ha\e one?"

Gabriel looked at me as though I were mad or maybe teasing him. "In the bughouse all we do is look at TV' I'm sick of it. I like to read, anyway."

A remark designed to ingratiate himself with me, I thought. I noticed that he said, "In the bughouse all we do" not "did."

He said he was tired and wanted to lie down. I drew the shade (there were no curtains) in his room.

My secretary, William, arri\ed and I dictated the Mexican-.\merican war. We didn't take our usual sex break; I'd told him my nephew had come to li\e with me and was in the house now. I was constantly aware that this kid was sleeping under my roof, a thought that elated me. Only now, looking back, do I recognize that I was patterning myself after my parents but hoping to correct their faults. I wanted to be as solid and responsible as my father but more generous and less angry. I wanted to be as matter-of-fact and brisk and basic as my mother without her hysteria and bragging. Like her, however, I believed in the importance of sleeping and eating well and performing well the most ordinary chores such as dressing and cleaning one's nails and washing up the dishes. Not for myself; when I was alone I sank dow n through seas of depression and self-neglect and had as sketchy a sense of time as a dozing dog. But for Gabriel. He'd gone too far, touched bottom and didn't know how to push off and swim back to the surface. He needed a strict, totally ordinary-regime and I would provide it. If he detested his father and stepmother and rebelled against them, then with me. his uncle, he'd cooperate, since he knew I had no legal or conventional reason to support him. He was here because I wanted him; he couldn't rebel against me.

I was afraid that if he slept too long this afternoon he'd never be able to sleep tonight. Around four I took some tea in to him, e\en balanced the tray on his chest so he'd have to sit up and take charge. "Aren't I awful, waking vou up?" I babbled. "I remember Nanny—" Gabriel's word for his grandmother—"would sing out on school days, when it was still cold

and dark outside, 'School bells are ringing,' and I wanted to wring her neck." Yes, clearly, I saw myself as Gabe's mother, I thought sourly.

When I went back half an hour later he'd put the untasted tea and the tray on the floor and was sound asleep. I thought that he must be full of that antipsychotic medication that had so brutalized Sean.

For the first five days he was in New York I never once made him leave the apartment or even do any chores. I'd hear him in his room, door closed, strumming his guitar and singing in his high, hillbilly voice. He had to raise his eyebrows in order to sing and lift his head high; his face turned red from the effort and the veins on his neck popped out. I liked his voice.

I sent him across the street with the laundry on the sixth day. On the seventh he walked the ten blocks to the supermarket and back alone and successfully bought the list I'd given him.

On the eighth day, a Monday, I just handed him the card of a dermatologist on Park Avenue. I told him to make an appointment and get there and back on his own; I had far too much work to worry about it. I didn't mouth the word dermatologist. I could see that Gabriel would never be able to bear a conversation about his skin.

Soon he was boiling up sulfurous concoctions twice a day and pressing them to his skin. He took antibiotics regularly.

I went with him to my barber and at Brooks bought him a sports jacket, two pairs of slacks and four shirts.

He began to speak like me, so much so that my mother mistook him for me. And my mother and sister, despite my warning them specifically, told Gabe, every time they talked to him, that he was becoming exactly like me. Of course I hoped he would, a bit; I even had a fantasy that he might change his surname (take his mother's maiden name), but though he had nothing good to say about his father he greeted my proposal with horror, and I immediately withdrew it.

We spent hours and hours together, but I didn't want to "hang out" with my nephew. I wanted him to read, which he began to do obsessively. He said he hoped to see a therapist but I told him, briskly, that he'd had quite enough of that. "I can't afford it," I said. "Anyway, it never works until you pay for it yourself You'll have time enough later, when you're grown up. Your problems aren't psychological so much as practical. You need to get back into school and catch up with kids your own age."