New York Echoes (5 page)

“Where can we go, then?” he challenged.
Clearly, he had been patient, understanding, and cooperative, had done
everything possible to help her cope with the situation.

“Maybe if we moved upstate. Somewhere in
the Hudson Valley further up the river,” she suggested.

“It's something inside you Rachel, not
in the apartment. Will these moves go on forever?”

“I hope not.”

He felt deeply sorry for her affliction.
Love, he sensed, was turning to pity and compassion. They slept less and less,
engaging in long, nocturnal conversations. They made love less often and when
they did it seemed routine, not spontaneous as it had been at the beginning.

But he agreed to look for a place
farther up the river, vowing to himself that this would be the absolute last
time they would move. Moving was an exhausting process and was financially
draining as well. Nevertheless, he was determined to help Rachel.

“We'll have to commute by train more
than an hour to get to work,” he told her.

“I'm willing if you are.”

“Maybe if we went up there and you
sniffed around. You know what I mean. Trees act as filters.”

“That would be wonderful.”

They drove farther up the Hudson Valley, past Peekskill, but she could still detect the smell.

“Does it seem less so up here?” he
asked.

“I'm not sure.”

Nevertheless, they contacted a real
estate broker and rented a nice house in Hudson, with a garden, surrounded by
trees, and the air, to him at least, seemed fresh and clear.

It didn't help. She could still smell
it.

“I'll never move again,” he told her. He
was beginning to see how this mad affliction was chipping away at their
relationship. He tried to rationalize his situation by characterizing her as
“handicapped.” If she was “handicapped,” he reasoned, he would stand by her no
matter what. “In sickness and in health,” the marriage vow decreed. Taking
refuge in the idea, he felt ennobled by his sacrifice. It was a sacrifice.

She had given up her job and was working
as a freelancer, doing her work at home. He couldn't, as he was needed by his
colleagues in face-to-face situations. The commute was exhausting him, making
him irritable and depressed. Of course, she was well aware of what was
happening but was helpless in the face of what was assailing her.

One day, he came home and she was
wearing a surgical mask obviously impregnated with heavy perfume, which smelled
like lilacs.

“Does it work?” he asked.

“Only when I keep it on,” she said, her
speech muffled by the mask. She took it off only to eat and drink and when she
talked on the telephone. She began to sleep with it. The odor of lilacs was so
intense it was giving him headaches. When he complained, she changed the
perfume to other flowered scents, but nothing worked as well as lilacs.

“I can't stand the smell of it,” he told
her often, trying valiantly to live with it, feeling guilty, finding it more
and more difficult to cope with the smell.

“Now you see what I mean,” she said.

“It's driving me crazy.”

“For me, it's either that smell or the
other. At least the smell of lilacs doesn't remind me of the other, the horror
of it.”

As time went on, he rarely saw her full
face. Her speech behind the mask was muffled and, at times, he found it
difficult to understand her words. The house was inundated with the smell of
lilacs. It permeated everything, even his clothes. His co-workers would comment
about it and after awhile he noticed that they preferred to keep their
distance. He was too embarrassed to explain what it was all about.

Finally, his boss called him into his
office.

“What is it with you, Larry? You stink of
perfume, smells like lilacs. It's making some people around here nauseous. Are
you wearing this scent?”

“Actually no,” he responded. “It's my
wife's. It gets into my clothes.”

“You'd better get rid of that stink,
Larry. Really, it's upsetting people. It's too heavy. Yuk. I'd prefer if you
left my office now.”

As he began to leave the office, his
boss called out.

“It's either my way or the highway,
Larry.”

At home, he tried sleeping in another
room and double-washing his shirts and underwear and sending his clothes to the
cleaners very frequently. Nothing helped. He explained the situation to Rachel.

“I may lose my job,” he said.

“Over the smell of lilacs? That's
ridiculous.”

“No it isn't,” he acknowledged. “It's
driving me crazy as well.”

The boss kept his word and he was fired.
In some ways it was a blessing because it forced him to confront his situation.
She couldn't stand the smell of the World Trade Center aftermath, and the lilac
scent was the only palliative that worked for her. And he couldn't stand the
smell of lilacs.

He tried working from home, but it was
impossible to live with the scent. By then, love had disappeared, although he
did feel deep compassion for her problem and a new emotion—guilt—was beginning
to take hold. As a temporary solution, he took an apartment in Manhattan and came up on weekends. Sometimes, she greeted him without the mask, but the
smell of lilacs had seeped into the atmosphere of the house. He could barely
wait out the weekend.

“I can still smell it,” she would tell
him when the mask was off and the lilac scent did not help.

Finally he could stand it no longer.

“We're both casualties of 9/11, Rachel.”

She agreed and they got a friendly
divorce. It took him months to get rid of the smell of lilacs. He called her on
the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

“I can still smell it,” she told him.

Jack Spencer observed
his fifty-year-old son across the table at Michael's, a celebrity haunt in Manhattan where Henry was a regular. Noting that his son's eyes swept the room with
eagle-eyed intensity, nodding here and there to others in the crowded dining
room, Spencer said, “You seem to know lots of people, Hank,” with a touch of
pride. Henry was the creative director of an important advertising agency.

“I guess,” Henry shrugged, offering his
father a shining, bright smile, certainly a cosmetic spruce-up. He was
handsome, with big brown eyes behind high cheekbones like his late mother's. In
fact, he looked so much like Dorothy that Spencer felt a pang of deep sentiment
and had to squelch a sob, disguising it with a cough.

Henry had certainly enhanced his
appearance since Spencer had last seen him two years ago. Apparently there had
been an eye job, which eliminated the bags that were a family affliction on
Spencer's side of the family tree. Spencer had never corrected the bags under
his eyes. And there was the touch-up of Henry's sideburns, once graying.

They did speak
periodically on the phone. Their conversations had become, over the years, more
like short news bulletins from New York than real dialogue. Spencer defined it
as perfunctory, obligatory, and dutiful, but feared to protest its lack of real
intimacy. He was well aware that his expectations exceeded the reality. But at
seventy-five, he supposed, he was more tolerant of disappointment and more
willing to accept small victories. Even lip service had its attractions.

The fact was that
hearing his son's voice was comforting, validating the existence of genetic
tissue between father and son. Lately they had communicated more by e-mail,
enhancing the news bulletin definition. Like any report from a faraway place,
all it lacked was a dateline and audio input.        

“You look great, Hank,” Spencer said
with sincere admiration. His son's success was a source of pride, and he
acknowledged it frequently in their telephone conversations and e-mails.

He had long ago made
peace with the knowledge that his son was gay. There was, of course, only one
answer to that dilemma, and he and Dorothy had confronted it when it became
apparent, then finally admitted. Parental aspirations had little to do with
reality. When one truly loved one's children, the only option was acceptance.

Henry's sister, Carol, had provided them
with two grandchildren, which filled that void. Not that he and Dorothy had
been professional grandparents. Carol lived with her husband and the kids in Los Angeles and Spencer got to see them twice a year. Thankfully, he had had his busy
practice as an internist in Chicago to keep him occupied and able to cope with
the physical loss of his wife, three years ago.

He was semi-retired
now, which enabled him to, as he put it, smell the roses, which was more of an
excuse than a necessity. Tomorrow he would board the gargantuan Queen Mary for a
trip across the pond with a group of Chicagoans to visit the literary sights of
the United Kingdom. English literature had always been his hobby and private
joy, especially the Victorians, and he had had a lifelong passion for
Shakespeare.

“It should be fun,
Dad,” Henry said as they dipped into their Cobb salads. “I'm glad you're
getting around more.” They were silent for awhile as Spencer surreptitiously
inspected his son. He felt clandestine, as if he were spying. Actually he was
remembering how it had been in their early years, the joy of his son's birth,
the homecoming, the upbringing, all the things they did together as a family,
how wonderful it was.

Family and work. He loved both aspects
of his life then. His children were the central fact of his and Dorothy's life,
and everything they did was to enhance their lives, contribute to their
happiness.

Memories crowded his mind as he sat
facing his firstborn, once his and Dorothy's fervent and loving occupation from
sunrise to sunset and certainly in their dreams. They had marveled at the
miracle of making this little boy. Surely other progenitors must have felt the
same way. Family was the cornerstone of living in those days before mobility
and ambition upset the balance. His and Dorothy's parents had lived in Chicago all their lives and so it had been with them. He knew, of course, when displacement
had begun and, he supposed, it was partially his and Dorothy's fault.

Eschewing Northwestern and the University of Chicago, he and his wife encouraged their children to attend pricey Ivy
League universities, and Henry had scored Harvard and Carol Yale, which was and
still is a feather in their parent's caps. Not wanting their children to be
burdened with debt, they had borrowed heavily for the tuitions and it had taken
them years to pay off the debts.

They had high
expectations, quickly dashed on graduation, that their children would return to
their Midwest haven loaded with honors and make Chicago their permanent home.
He had yearned to be the paterfamilias of a growing brood, a wise guide,
steering both his children through the minefields that awaited them in
adulthood. Dorothy, too, had her own ambitions to be the mother hen grandma
whose long soft arms would embrace her blood progeny through the generations.

They had, of course, survived their
original disappointment, learning the hard way that destiny had other things in
store. Mobility had trumped their dreams, and once out of the coop both
children had fled. Memories of family joys, concerned only the first two
decades of their children's lives, probably less, for soon both kids had
established themselves elsewhere and condemned them forever to long distance
parenting, telephonic talk, and reports from afar.

Of course they
remained connected via all those new devices and they all participated in a
running documentary of their children's activities. Inquiries were made about
their own lives, mostly, they suspected, with a sense more of obligation than
overwhelming concern. The children seemed to accept the notion of their
parents' decline, often with, what they supposed and hoped was genuine regret.
Spencer assumed that their memories of childhood, those crucial two decades,
continued to hold them in thrall as they did him.

They had been dutiful,
even Henry, whose gaydom might have threatened the old bond, but Spencer and
Dorothy felt they had navigated that choppy river with tact and understanding.
Besides, there was little they could do about it.

Observing his son now,
seeing the child in the man, the deeply loved firstborn, he remembered those
first years, the joys of fathering, the caresses of that smooth baby flesh, the
giggles and tickles as the little boy got between them in their bed to be loved
and fondled, those first steps, the feel of that little hand in his, the
olfactory memory of those little boy and later little girl's smells.

His pride of progeny
was boundless. Drawings done by both children in first grade were still
preserved forever in frames as if they were great art and continued to grace
his Chicago apartment. Nothing could ever erase the angst of old illnesses,
measles, mumps, croup, and all the other large and small ailments and
affliction that plagued them as during their childhood. Carol had scarlet fever
and frightened them for days as they imagined the ultimate tragedy, the
potential loss of a young child.

He and Dorothy were
concerned and deeply interested parents in all phases of their children's
lives. No parents were more dedicated, more devoted, more supportive of their
offspring.

For years he and
Dorothy had pored over the thousands of pictures they had taken of themselves
and their children, during family vacations, outings, and visits to the
long-gone generation of their own parents. For some unspoken reason, as the
decades passed, it became too painful to look back through this tangible
visibility and it felt better to resort to memory to revisit those old images.

Then, looking at his
son's smooth complexion, he remembered something that he could not contain and
words suddenly popped out.

“Do you remember when
I gave you your first electric razor, Hank? I took you into Marshall Field's
and made a big deal about it, then instructed you how to use it?”

It was hardly the most
important incident in their father son life, but it did mark the end of
something and the beginning of a new chapter. Henry's thin smile and shrug
indicated only the vaguest of memory.

“And the bike?”
Spencer said, his memories drifting as his mind lighted on the strangest
incidents. For some reason, Henry had great difficulty learning to ride a
two-wheeler and Spencer had patiently held the bike upright until Henry had
finally mastered the process. It seemed like weeks until the boy was finally
able to ride on his own. There were countless other incidents, but it just
didn't seem the time or place to be overly sentimental.

What he kept
especially hidden from revelation at that moment was the day when he called
Henry aside to inform him about what was then called “the facts of life.” It
was summer and they were at their lakeside cottage and he had illustrated the
process by using a twig to outline in the dirt at lakeside what happens when
the penis enters the vagina. Embarrassed in the telling, he used medical terms,
which seemed to confuse the boy.

“Do you understand all
this, Hank?” he had asked.

“I think so, Dad,” the
boy had answered, and that was enough to satisfy the father that he had done
his duty.

The irony of the
memory caused him to swallow hard and a bit of lettuce caught in his throat. So
many things were left unsaid now. It had been years since they had had an
intimate conversation, although he was not quite sure he knew what that would
entail. In fact, except for the blood bond and the obligatory connection,
Spencer felt that there had been little intimacy between them for three decades
or more.

Bits and pieces of his
son's adult life had emerged in passing, in the unguarded and inadvertent
remark, but nothing said seemed to have the genuine feel of revelation. His son
had been through therapy, had had various partners, whom he had met on
occasion, but this information was merely offered as dry facts and impersonal
stage asides.

Spencer often wondered
if being a father meant that he had any right to any more than a cursory
interior view of his son's psyche. Where, after all, were the real boundaries
of fatherhood?

Spencer's relationship
with his own father had been closer, but they had had the advantage of
proximity and frequent face-to-face conversations. They had observed each
other, and overcome reticence by familiarity. Still, he wondered if he had
really known his father, the man's inner life. Or had his father known him? His
memories were heartfelt and pleasant and, in truth, he now wished he knew his
father better and would have welcomed some memoir that would have revealed more
than he knew.

“What is it, Dad?”
Henry asked suddenly.

Spencer realized he
was staring at his son.

“Sorry, Hank,” Spencer
said. “I was just thinking about the old days when you were a kid and we were
all together.” Well not quite, but that was what it came down to.

“The good old days,”
Henry chuckled. Spencer detected a mocking tone.

“They were the best of
it, Hank,” Spencer said, pretending now to eat his salad with relish. He felt
suddenly bereft, unbearably alone. “Do you ever think about those days?”

Henry put down his
fork. His nostrils flared and he used his napkin to pat his lips, then took a
deep sip on a glass of water.

“I do, Dad,” Henry
said. “I do think about them. Then he added. “Not often.”

Spencer could not think
of a response. He tried not to show his disappointment.

“The fact is, Dad. I'm
sorry to say. I really didn't like my childhood.”

“You didn't?”

While the words were a
shock and Spencer felt a sudden wave of nausea assail him, he valiantly tried
to keep up appearances. It was a blow for which he was totally unprepared.

“I was not a happy
camper, Dad.”

No, the father
protested, searching for soft words of refutation. It was, Spencer concluded
quickly, revisionism fostered by those years in therapy.

“You could have fooled
me,” Spencer said hoarsely. “And your mother.”

“You mustn't blame
yourself, Dad. Or Mom. I know you tried. Valiantly.”

“We were your
parents,” Spencer said, feeling a flush of anger, as he pushed his plate away,
as if some gesture of impatience was needed. “We loved you and did everything
in our power to give you the best of life, and, above all, to give you
happiness. Are you saying that there was no joy in your childhood?”

“I assume you want me
to be truthful,” Henry said blandly. His attention was suddenly allayed by a
greeting to someone passing their table. It seemed to Spencer a rude gesture,
considering the earth-shattering importance to him of his son's remark.

“You mean your version
of the truth.”

“My perception is my
truth, Dad.”

“Are you saying that
all those episodes and incidents in your childhood, our early times, what we
did together as a family, all those acts of devotion and, yes, sacrifice and
expense, all that loving care lavished on you by your mother and me was all for
naught, bringing you nothing but unhappiness.”

“It's a lot more
complicated than that, Dad. You just don't understand what it means to struggle
with one's sexual identity in a potentially hostile middle-class environment.”

Spencer felt his
stomach tighten. He reached out for a glass of water, noting that his hand
shook. It was impossible to hide his reaction.