A Changed Man (29 page)

T
HE FIRST VOICE
M
EYER HEARS
in the morning is Irene’s,
saying, “Don’t you think you should phone and see if the poor man survived?”

Hauling himself from a deep sleep, he can feel Irene’s impatience coating him like the aerosol spray she insists Babu use for frying. The fights she’s had with that poor man over clarified butter!

All the way home in the car last night, Irene had criticized Meyer, his staff, and especially Bonnie, who should have been watching Vincent instead of massaging the Ticknors’ egos. And where was Meyer? Irene wanted to know. Showing off, rattling on about bungee jumps and faith cells. Did Meyer
care
if the guy lived?

Meyer had prayed for Vincent. But he couldn’t tell Irene that without making himself sound smarmy and pious. The main thing is that Vincent survived. And that Meyer’s speech and Vincent’s bravery will do wonders for the foundation.

Meanwhile, Irene has been asking about their plans for Vincent’s future. How will they dispose of him when he stops being useful? How far they have come from the time when, after an event like last night’s, Irene couldn’t stop telling Meyer how brilliant he was—instead of remarking, casually, on how impressive Vincent had been. When did Irene become Vincent’s champion and protector? Since their dinner party, when Vincent flirted with her. Meyer doesn’t blame Irene, but it’s demoralizing, all the same: the chasm between what matters to Meyer and what’s important to his wife.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” says Meyer wearily. “Bonnie would have called me.”

How could Meyer
not
have phoned? He
is
becoming a monster.

Irene says, “Don’t you think it’s strange that you’ll make a million calls to get a guy sprung from jail halfway around the globe, and here’s this guy who’s been working for you, and you’re not even concerned?”

“I am concerned. I’m very concerned.”

“Concerned!” says Irene. “Just not enough to pick up the phone. Meyer Maslow, the second in line for sainthood after Nelson Mandela, can’t bother reaching out to see if his protégé made it through the night, just like that first night you stashed the guy at Bonnie’s and didn’t—”

“I’m sorry, I should have called.”

“You should have,” Irene says.

“I guess no man’s a hero to his valet.” Meyer gets out of bed.

“I hate it when you say that,” Irene calls after him.

“I hate when you say ‘reach out,’” Meyer says, shutting the bathroom door.

By the time he gets out of the shower, Irene has left the bedroom. How long does she want to drag this out?

Meyer could leave the house without seeing her, which would terrify Irene, who has a superstitious fear of physical separation or of falling asleep in the midst of an argument. Suppose one of them was hit by a car, and the other survived knowing the other died angry? Which proves that Irene still loves him. But does he love Irene?

He finds her in the breakfast room. He kisses the top of her head. Irene turns, grateful and radiant.

“Call me, please,” she says.

Walking into the office, Meyer registers a barometric change. The receptionist, the pretty Asian girl whose name he always forgets, has turned back into the person she was when she first came to work here, when the sight of Meyer filled her eyes with droplets of admiration. After a while that dewiness dried up to the point at which she hardly bothered to say hello if she was answering a call. But now her voice catches as she says, “Good morning, Mr. Maslow.”

“Good morning…,” says Meyer, not chancing a guess. Something with an A. Anita?

People sing out from their offices,
Meyer Meyer Meyer.
Everybody’s calling his name, like some magical incantation. The dinner must have gone well. He knew his speech went over. He could feel the audience with him. Maybe they went home and thought about the faith cells and the moral bungee jump. And Vincent’s unfortunate near-disaster provided a living lesson on the dangers and the glories of faith, and of letting yourself be changed.

Already, a huge stack of messages has piled up on Meyer’s desk. People are probably calling to compliment him on his speech. He’s trying to remember who Colette Martinez is when the door flies open, and Roberta bursts in.

“You’re here! Do you know what’s happening?”

When Roberta tells him that the reporters have been phoning about Vincent’s allergy attack, Meyer can’t help it. His heart sinks. The fuss is not about him or his speech but about…peanuts. Maybe
Meyer
should almost have died. He’s closer to death than Vincent. But Meyer’s old, which would mean that his death would be less dramatic and sexy. Odds are that it will not take place onstage in front of an audience but in some lonely, frightening hospital bed, like Minna’s.

“Are we on the same page here?” Roberta asks. “Everybody wants a piece of this. Vincent’s skinhead past, his near-death experience. Personal growth. Human change. Turning your life around, nearly dying, surviving to do more. Everybody’s fighting for an exclusive. A month ago, I couldn’t get two paragraphs on the second page of the Metro section. Do you think I didn’t
notice
how upset everybody was? Do you think I didn’t
know
that my job was on the line? And this morning I get a call from Barbara Walters’s people. Do you know what this means for your book?”

Meyer wishes that Roberta hadn’t attempted this cheap appeal to his literary vanity. The subject is a sore one. No one needs to tell Meyer that
One Heart at a Time
has failed to sell as well as his previous books. He pretends it doesn’t matter, that his real work is not about that. Only Irene has suggested, humiliatingly, that Meyer ask his publisher why they’re not doing more. Does Irene think that Nelson Mandela does bookstore readings and tours? Yet now, just hearing that the book might do well is having a positive effect. For the first time since he finished
One Heart at a Time,
Meyer can imagine writing again, perhaps something combining last night’s speech with the story of his experience with Vincent.

“All right, forget that,” Roberta says. “Forget your book for a minute. Let’s look at what this means for the foundation. Because face it, Meyer, not all of this is going to be about Vincent’s close call. What gives this story meaning is the work we’re doing, how much
more
we could do. Bonnie’s got to get on board with this. We have to come up with a strategy for converting all this free publicity into wads of development money.”

Roberta’s right. It would be nice not to have to worry about what will happen to the foundation in the economic downturn everyone’s predicting. When no one has a dime to spend on international human rights, Brotherhood Watch will have a comfort margin. Every interview, every TV spot, will translate into the rescue of innocent human beings. This is not about Meyer or Vincent. This is something higher. If the moral bungee jump that God wants Meyer to make requires being interviewed by Barbara Walters, so be it. Meyer will jump.

Roberta leaves. She’ll be back. And now the electricity sparking all over the office begins to affect even Meyer. It’s all he can do not to run down the hall and ask Roberta who’s called now, who said what. He buzzes the receptionist and asks her to let him know when Vincent and Bonnie arrive.

Still holding the phone, Meyer reads through the messages on his desk. Larry Ticknor called, will call back. Minna called—congratulations on last night’s speech—wants to know, did you get Dickens chapter?

Meyer puts down the message slip. So it was Minna who sent him the Mrs. Jellyby passage. Was it intended to be cruel, or merely to amuse him? Why does Meyer feel so sure that it wasn’t meant well? Why else was it sent anonymously? But if Minna had wanted to hurt him, why was she calling now to say she’d done it? He visited her in the hospital! What did he do to offend her? Maybe illness has unhinged her. He remembers her acting strangely at dinner at his house, something about the Cochin Jews that he can’t recall but which makes his stomach flutter. His queasiness intensifies as he thinks back to this morning. How irritated Irene was with him for not calling to ask about Vincent. So many good things are happening. Why should he feel so uneasy? The combined weight of Irene’s annoyance and Minna’s mysterious anger presses, like a knuckle, on the center of his chest.

The pressure doesn’t let up until Bonnie and Vincent finally walk into his office. If only Irene and Minna could look into his heart. Meyer cares about Bonnie and Vincent. He’s delighted to see them!

“How are you feeling?” Meyer says.

“Okay,” says Vincent. “Tired.”

Bonnie must be tired, too. Her eyes look sad, almost furtive. So it’s partly to lift her spirits that Meyer says, “Have you heard the news? Hollywood’s calling, I gather.”

Bonnie has heard. Vincent hasn’t. Bonnie hasn’t told Vincent about the media onslaught, which means she must have found a way to sneak him past Roberta. Vincent’s had a hard night. He’s probably still fragile.

Meyer aims for the simple and direct. “Vincent, my friend, are you ready for this? You’re about to become famous.”

Vincent pales.

“What’s wrong?” Meyer says. “Are you
sure
you’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” says Vincent. “Really. I’m fine. That’s great. Let’s get to work.”

O
N THE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL,
Danny spends fifteen
minutes in the cracker aisle of the convenience store, choosing the perfect corn chip to get him through the hours of torture he’s doomed to spend at his computer, writing his entire Hitler paper, which is due tomorrow.

This morning in World Civilizations class, he’d almost stopped being friends with Chloe. How could anyone, even a girl, not only write her paper on Nelson Mandela but hand it into Linda Graber a whole day early! Chloe did him a favor. Her turning in her paper inspired Mrs. Graber to give the class a pep talk on the importance of revising and proofreading. Revising? Proofreading? Whom was Graber kidding? All Danny heard were those three little words: paper due tomorrow.

Danny will be lucky to get the paper written at all, which is why he fortifies himself with the perfect mix of salty and sweet, two gigantic bags of chips and—after a stall between the orange soda and cola, a deliberation based on his estimation of the energy-giving potential of caffeine versus massive doses of Red Dye #2—the two-liter Pepsi.

The long sleepless night he spent at Dad’s and the hellish car ride this morning have done nothing for Danny’s mood or for his powers of concentration. And now he’s got to write five pages on how Hitler changed the world. How about: The guy started World War II and killed six million Jews. Whom is Danny blaming here? Picking Hitler was his idea.

Briefly Danny considers writing something about Vincent. How Hitler’s influence still hangs on, how he won’t die, how he’s like the Tom Cruise character in
Interview with the Vampire.
Because though most people know Hitler was evil, there are still guys, like the maniacs in ARM, who think he had some good ideas. That would take no research at all. Danny could just write it. But it’s supposed to be about Hitler, not Danny’s skinhead roommate. And Danny’s not about to tell the whole school about his unusual home life.

Vincent claims he never liked Hitler. He also says the guy was gay. Maybe Danny should look into that. Is it a well-known fact? How gay was that mustache? Is that a homophobic thought? It’s crucial that Mrs. Graber not think so. And Danny
isn’t
homophobic, though he knows kids who are. Those kids will probably think that Danny’s gay just for writing the paper. Danny’s sure he isn’t gay. Just because he hasn’t had sex with a girl doesn’t mean anything. He’d have sex in a minute if Chloe would do it with him. But it’s so hard to tell about girls, and by now it’s too late to ask the other guys, all of whom are pretending to already know everything about sex. Danny wonders how you start, how you know when a girl wants to. He can’t think about that now. He needs to concentrate on Hitler.

At least he has the house to himself for a few hours. Max has a study date with some kid from his class—another fact that Mom drilled into Danny’s brain yesterday before they left for Dad’s. Danny hopes Max is okay, that he’s gotten over whatever was wrong with him last night and this morning.

Danny goes to his room, sits down at the computer, and Googles “Hitler homosexuality.” Over two thousand sites come up. Bingo. He’s in business.

The first link takes him to some professor in Italy who’s discovered a secret archive in Rome about the boys Hitler paid to go to bed with him when he was a student in Munich. Plus the men he murdered because they knew about it. On another site, a Chicago psychiatrist has written about how Hitler went to the greatest extremes in human history to prove that he was straight. From the lonely, low-tech look of these sites, Danny can safely assume that the question of Hitler’s gayness is not the hottest topic in cyberspace. He could do something original. This paper could be fun.

After visiting a dozen sites, Danny writes his first sentence: “Since the end of the war, people have been trying to understand Adolf Hitler. Some people have said he was crazy. Others say he was evil. Still others believe he was a fanatical genius who believed that he was leading his people into a better life.”

Danny stops. It’s not too early in the paper to let Mrs. Graber know where he stands. “The six million innocent Jews murdered in Hitler’s death camps are six million reasons to conclude that he was a monster. Not to mention the gypsies, and the Poles, and gay people.

“Now new evidence from an archive in Rome suggests that Hitler was gay and wanted to hide it, or else that he was secretly gay and wanted to be straight.”

All right! This is a walk in the park. Now all he has to do is tease out the facts of Hitler’s life and stop every so often to monitor Hitler’s gay activity. He’s almost gotten to the good part, the night of the long knives. He says it aloud a couple of times.
The night of the long knives.

Just then, he hears the door slam. Mom and Vincent are back. They’ve picked up Max on their way home. So that’s the end of his peaceful moment alone with Hitler and his boyfriends. Danny’s surprised to discover that he’s written almost three pages. All he has left to do is add some stuff about Himmler, whom the Web sites say was Hitler’s main squeeze, and then a little about Albert Speer, whom Adolf supposedly had a crush on…and then about the death camps, just to make it clear that Danny isn’t an idiot who believes that the important thing about Hitler was who he went to bed with. Or didn’t. If the point of the paper is how the guy changed the world, ultimately that had nothing to do with his being in, or out of, the closet.

If Danny doesn’t go downstairs soon, his mom is going to hunt him down and be annoyingly happy to find him at his desk. She’ll noodle his head and look over his shoulder and read as much of his paper as she can before he pushes her away. Nothing could be less helpful than watching Mom rack her brain for a tactful way to tell him his paper sucks. That will make it harder to finish. If his mother hates it, what will Mrs. Graber think? With his quiz grades and low marks for classroom participation, he needs a B to pass. A wave of unease washes over him. He should be doing Nelson Mandela.

Anyhow, it’s break time. What’s happening down in the kitchen?

Vincent and Mom are at the table, drinking beer from bottles. Mom never liked beer before. Something feels different, some tension in the air that wasn’t there yesterday. Is this about Vincent’s allergy attack? Is Vincent pissed at Mom for nearly letting him die? Come on, it wasn’t Mom’s fault. Danny puts his arm around Mom’s shoulders and gives her a two-second squeeze. Mom leans into his elbow so hard that Danny has to prop her up with his other hand so he can pry himself loose.

Then Mom says, “Danny, is Max okay? He seemed a little groggy when we picked him up today. He came home and went straight to sleep. Did Daddy give him something to calm him down?”

Is
Max
okay? Why doesn’t she ask about Danny, whom Dad and Lorraine left to deal with his brother? But it’s darling baby Max who gets all the attention.

“He’s just sleepy,” Danny says. “I don’t think he got much rest. It was a weird night.”

“Weird how?” says Mom. But Danny’s not about to explain. Let her chew on that
weird.
Instead he turns to Vincent and says, “Hey, I hear you almost died.”

He’s glad that Vincent didn’t die. What a grim scene this would be. Would they have to arrange his funeral? Would they invite his Nazi friends?

“Yeah,” says Vincent. “Code blue, for sure. I was right on the edge.”

“So what was it like?” Danny says. “Did you see all your dead relatives and a white corridor lined with bright lights?”

Vincent gives him a long look as if he’s checking to see if he’s high. Danny flashes him right back: No. At least Vincent knows enough to wonder if he is stoned. In that way, he knows Danny better than his parents.

“No red carpet, no welcoming committee,” says Vincent. “But I did hear them unzipping the body bag.”

“You’re kidding, right?” says Danny.

Mom laughs out loud. Normally, a remark like that would earn Vincent a disapproving look, and she would say something like: Vincent, please. Don’t be disgusting. As if he and Max were babies she had to protect from Vincent’s crudeness. Something really
has
changed. For some reason it makes Danny mad. It’s as if Mom and Vincent know something he doesn’t. Has his mom no loyalty? Siding with Vincent against him. What makes him think anyone’s taking sides? What
happened
at that dinner?

“So, Mom,” Danny says. “Has Dad told you the good news?”

“Good news?” Mom’s instantly nervous. Be
very
nervous. For once she’s got a right.

“He and Lorraine are getting married and adopting a kid from Bulgaria. A girl.” He can’t believe he’s socking her with this, in front of Vincent, before she’s had dinner, before she’s been home for fifteen minutes. Maybe spending the night at his father’s, with Dad and Lo the Ho, has somehow rubbed off on him and made him a meaner person.

He shouldn’t have said anything. Or at least not now. But he has, and his punishment is to watch Mom’s face do that subtle cringe and recoil you wouldn’t even notice unless you knew her. Danny wants to hug her. He wants to say he’s sorry. But he can’t say the one thing that would help, which is that it isn’t true.

Danny waits for her to roll her eyes and say: How typical of your dad. How
silly
and
self-involved,
words she used all the time before the divorce counselor made her stop.

Instead, Mom smiles and says, “How sweet of them. Just think. Somewhere there’s a Bulgarian baby who doesn’t even have a clue that she’s about to get lucky.”