The Poison Tree (18 page)

“Charity,” she quietly pronounced as though coining the phrase for the first time, “begins at home.” It was a saying she quoted enthusiastically, along with “Many hands make light the work!” Her favorite to me, however, was “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day …” That seemed a good fit for nearly every occasion. She never asked me for the precise details of my departure, or how I had managed to return home from Cold Spring. Normally, I would have felt relieved at the absence of an interrogation; now, however, it was further evidence that her sense of reality was slipping.

My father's response was different. He had moved into an apartment on East 56th near Sutton Place, and when he learned I had suddenly quit my job, I received a summons to meet him at his apartment at 7:30 a.m. sharp on Monday, before he left for work. I arrived at the appointed time and rang the doorbell. To my surprise, it was not my father, but his brother Malcolm, who opened the door.

Malcolm, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, answered the door with an unfiltered Pall Mall dangling from his mouth and offered me his freshly-shaven cheek. He wore a gray tweed sports jacket with leather elbow patches, a checked button-down shirt, pink tie, and a pair of gray Hush Puppies. As he turned his head to receive my kiss, Coke and chipped ice sloshed over the side of his highball glass.

“Hello, Henry, come in.”

Grandma often described her younger son as a genius, and indeed Malcolm was likely to go off on lengthy uninterrupted diatribes about nearly anything. In particular, he loved to opine on contemporary race relations—how “the Ethnics had taken over the city.” He had an extremely lucrative otolaryngology practice on Park Avenue, along with an appointment at
Columbia University's Presbyterian Hospital. I had no way of knowing that one day Malcolm would lose his practice for inappropriately prescribing and dispensing controlled substances—and practicing medicine while impaired.

“Your father's in the bathroom,” Malcolm said as I walked in. “You know how long he takes in there primping; he'll be out in a minute.”

“This is some building,” I said, searching for something to say, looking around in vain for something which would remind me of our apartment on 86th. “The doorman practically frisked me before he would let me up. It was like the Spanish Inquisition.”

“I guess it depends on how you're dressed,” boomed my father unexpectedly from the bathroom. “That's what they get paid for—to keep out the riff-raff.” The toilet detonated on cue like an exclamation point.

“Come in, sit down, he'll be right out,” Malcolm repeated. He twitched, and the long ash from his Pall Mall dropped onto a Persian rug unnoticed.

“What are you doing here, Uncle Malcolm? Aren't you working today?”

“Of course,” he replied, “but your father asked me to come over here while he talked with you.”

I knew when I was asked to come over early, that I was in trouble. On a positive note, Uncle Malcolm's presence might be read as being to my advantage, since he lacked my father's violent temper. On the other hand, the fact that Dad found it necessary to send for his brother at all was a troubling sign that this meeting was more significant than I had anticipated.

“He'll be right in. Any moment now.” Malcolm's nervous agitation was another bad omen.

Yet another hint that this encounter wasn't going to be pleasant was when I casually asked how things were going and he pulled out a revolver.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell's that!”

“A .38-caliber,” Malcolm said between laying one lit cigarette on the side of the ashtray and lighting another. “It's so I can park at Columbia Presbyterian without being robbed by the Schwartzas. I didn't even repair my car after the last break-in; as soon as they see you've got plates with an M.D., you've had it. Drugs. At least I improve my chances a little by driving a Buick that looks like shit.”

Malcolm stood up and shouted in the direction of the bathroom, “Norman! Jesus Christ, aren't you done in there yet?”