The Poison Tree (31 page)

My mother began to weep.

My father spat his mouthful of champagne onto the grass.

“What are you crying for, Mom?” I asked. The question was met with a withering stare. And then came this:

“Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child

Than the sea monster.”

Afterwards, silence.

My father crushed his champagne flute under his shoe. “Make no mistake,” he said with apparent tranquility, “this will not happen, you bastard!”

I tried to make amends, but he refused to answer. He called a cab and flew back to New York that same afternoon. There was nothing Edna or
anyone could do to appease his fury, and when I apologized for not telling him about the wedding, he stared right through me. His moustache twitched, and I knew all too well what he longed to say and do.

A week later, I received an express package in the mail. My father enclosed a collection of divorce statistics for my edification. Of course, by then every member of my family (including Uncle Malcolm) had been divorced, so he had little credibility. For the next several months, I was subjected to a barrage of telephone calls from both my parents reminding me how much better I could do than marry a “fat Jewish girl” from St. Louis “by the name of Cohn.” Both city and surname were pronounced as anti-Semitic slurs.

They screamed and yelled, but reluctantly my parents both agreed to come out for the wedding in August. Separately.

On the steps of the synagogue where the ceremony was to take place, my father swore at my “Lerner taste” for not knowing better than to wear brown shoes with a tuxedo. He insisted I go back to the hotel and change. I did.

Over the next two decades, as my father rose to the very top of his profession, I managed to complete my PhD and obtain my first teaching post at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He became vice-president and chairman of the Bond Funds Division at Merrill Lynch. He was looked upon as the “Godfather” of municipal bonds, and his outsized personality dominated the most profitable and successful brokerage house in the world. Not for nothing had he received that
King Kong
poster. He was widely considered a genius, someone who did things his own way—ethical, but imperious, egotistical, and unpredictable. Like everyone else in high finance during those Reagan years, he embraced the conspicuous consumption of the 1980s. Still, for all the chauffeur-driven limousines, magnums of Dom Perignon and Montecristo cigars, he retained something of the conservative child of the Depression. On weekends, he and Malcolm hunted for bargains at Alexanders. For all his ostentation, he really did not spend huge sums on himself, and he never remarried. He lived with comparative modesty. On one of my rare visits back to New York, I even saw him wearing a pair of reading glasses, darning a pair of socks.

“You look a bit like Grandma in that pose,” I noted sarcastically.

His half-smile was accompanied by tapping his red swizzle stick against the side of his highball glass, followed by a deep swallow of J&B and soda. My attempt at childish malice was swatted away.

The women in his life were interchangeable: fit, young, blonde, and attractive in an outdoorsy way. None were Jewish. Jewish women, he told me in a loud voice deliberately within Patty's earshot, were loud, opinionated, and grew fat once they were safely married. He still knew how to press my buttons. Although his blondes dressed with sophistication, it was apparent that their taste was of recent vintage. I met several on visits back to New York from the Netherlands, which my father generously paid for. On these trips, which included Patty and the children, I met my father alone for dinner. When his limo pulled up at our hotel, there was invariably a laughing blonde in the back seat, applying lipstick or sipping champagne from the mini-fridge. Sometimes, she came with an attractive friend. A friend my own age. Was my father trying to set me up, tempt me to stray from Patty? It certainly appeared that way.

Just before his seventieth birthday, Merrill Lynch announced that they were shifting their corporate headquarters from Wall Street to a new campus in New Jersey. My father was indignant and refused to move. He was adamant about not leaving the city. This was followed by a proposal from the top to restructure his division. Again, this was ignored. Finally, his combination of obstinacy, arrogance, and ego led to a reduction of his role in the firm. He remained in his New York office with a small staff, but the rest of his huge division was transferred. In 1991, he was replaced as head of Municipal Bonds in favor of a younger man with an MBA. My father was allowed to retain the title, Chairman of the Municipal Bond Division, but no longer performed the day-to-day administration of the division he had created.

Rather than subject himself to this indignity, he retired. He had been at the firm for over twenty years, and was truly a legend in the world of corporate finance. Lavish parties were thrown, at which he never permitted the word “retirement” to be uttered. I returned for one of these grand fêtes, and smuggled a box of Havana cigars from the Netherlands as a gift. As I stood trying to deliver my present, one of his administrative assistants directed me to put it on a table across the room. There I saw not one, but several identical
boxes of the same contraband Montecristo cigars. I don't think he ever knew I got him anything, or for that matter, even cared. A few weeks later, I received a thank you note signed by his secretary.

I knew nothing of my father's illness until Malcolm phoned me in Holland. After muttering some pleasantries in Dutch to remind me he was familiar with the country and remembered a few words of the language, he told me my father had been taken to the hospital, and would be there for some time.

“What?!” I was stunned. Dad had never been sick in his life.

Malcolm was annoyed by my interruption. Like Grandma, he delighted in telling interminable stories fleshed out with specific details only he could provide. I was reminded of her explanation that if I left my shoes untied, I would likely fall to my death through an open grating in front of Gristede's; or if I happened to pet a dog in her lobby, a bite and rabies would almost surely follow. Didn't I remember that Morrie's son's ear had been mutilated by some mongrel in Central Park? He needed to have it sewn back on. He would never be the same, poor boy. The world was full of incomprehensible horrors, leading to misfortune, agony, and death. Such disasters were particularly likely to befall me, she suggested, if I didn't scrupulously wash my hands both before and after each meal.

I thought about Grandma while Malcolm made his usual sniffing sound, then said, “Just a second,” as he irritably let the receiver fall on a table. I heard him crumple cellophane from a fresh pack of Pall Malls. I imagined I could smell the smoke through the phone as he exhaled. A deep swallow of Coke followed, then the rattle of the chipped ice against his glass. No conversation with Uncle Malcolm ever lasted less than a half hour, but the performance could easily last much longer. Whether the subject was racial violence, nudist colonies in Spain, the impending threat of socialized medicine, or the quality of hashish at the
Nieuwezijdsvoorburgwaal
near the Central Station in Amsterdam, he was equipped with both questions and answers. At this moment, however, I was too impatient to wait.

“Malcolm—please tell me what happened!”

“Well, after he passed out, they took him to the hospital.”

“Passed out?”

“He had been to the dentist with an infected tooth. When he got home, he collapsed and was taken by ambulance. Then he was subjected to a detailed blood analysis. Not the level of sophistication we do here at Presbyterian, y'understand, but pretty good just the same. I mean, under the circumstances. And I think it was remarkably perceptive of the physician to realize your father was stubborn and would just try to leave the hospital, and go—”

“What exactly are we talking about, Uncle Malcolm?”

“I want to explain this to you precisely, step by step; so just give me a chance and don't interrupt. Y'see, the problem turned out to be more serious than anything the doctors imagined. So they sent him off to the hospital. There's poison, y'understand. Poison in his blood.…” His voice trailed off.

“Poison in his blood? For Christ's sake, Uncle Malcolm, what do you mean?”

“Lymphoma. Your father has lymphoma, Henry,” Malcolm said simply.

“What … what does that mean? Isn't that like leukemia?” My mind flashed back to the sound of the little boy Eisenberg crying his eyes out that Saturday morning at Rodeph Sholem. We never saw him again.

“Well, Henry, I'll tell you,” he said, and began as though speaking to a slow-witted eight year old. “Lymphoma, y'understand, is one of many blood cancers that develop from diseased cells in the lymphatic system … part of the body's immune system. The lymphatic system is important because it fights infection. What happens is, with lymphoma, one of the cells undergoes a transformation into a malignant cell, and, y'understand, it begins to grow abnormally.”

“Oh God.”

“There are more than thirty different types of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is what he has, y'understand? These include both aggressive and indolent kinds. They start in lymph nodes or in lymphatic tissue in the stomach or intestines. Often, they spread from one site to other parts of the body. So, he might get symptoms like night sweats, coughing, fatigue, and of course, swelling of the lymph nodes.”

“What's the—his prognosis?” I gripped the phone tightly.

“Well, your father could live another twenty years, or … it could be soon. They don't know.”

“How soon should I come in?”

“If it were my father, I'd come in yesterday.”

I heard him swish the ice around in his glass, sniff, and take a long swallow of Coke.

Six months after this diagnosis, however, my father improved enough from his radiation therapy to propose taking my two daughters aged five and eight to St. Martin's for a week's vacation. He still needed regular transfusions, but was told his platelet levels were manageable. Although the thought of him with my girls in another part of the world made me nervous, it was difficult to refuse my father at any time, and particularly now at this point in his life. Who was I to say he couldn't see his lovely granddaughters? Reluctantly, Patty and I agreed, but only after he agreed to hire a young au pair whose responsibility it would be to supervise the girls. However, on the second day of their vacation, Jerusha, our eight year old, called from St. Martin to say that the sitter had packed her bags after a single day and had flown back to the States.

“Daddy, please save us!” Jerusha cried, voice quivering.

Something had obviously happened between my father and the eighteen-year-old au pair, and I asked Jerusha to put him on the phone. He calmly explained that nothing was wrong. The girl had returned to the States because of a family emergency. He assured me at length that everything was fine, that he would find someone on the island who spoke English to help out with the girls. Part of me wanted to get on the next flight to St. Martin. Another told me that what I heard was an overly dramatic child understandably worried at being left alone without her parents for the first time. Since Patty was away visiting relatives in California, I questioned myself—should I tell her what Jerusha had said? If I did, I knew she would cancel her vacation, rush back home, and insist that I fetch the girls in St. Martin. Instead, I assured my daughter I would see her at the end of the week. My father got back on the phone to tell me the kids were absolutely fine—there was no need to worry. I decided that Jerusha had overreacted to the au pair's sudden departure.

When I met the girls at Kennedy Airport, they were tanned, beautiful, and laughing; they both had their long hair braided in cornrows, and were dressed in gorgeous matching outfits acquired on the island. I was embarrassed by my excessive worry—of course nothing was wrong. I was glad I hadn't responded precipitously out of fear.

However, as soon as my father left for the men's room, the girls' expressions changed and both began sobbing uncontrollably. Jerusha whispered she had been terrified the whole time—why hadn't I come to save them? And why did Grandpa Norman always want to be alone with Natasha? Was it just because Natasha was littler and cuter? Looking over her shoulder, Jerusha confessed she was afraid to leave her sister alone with her grandfather, and had packed her suitcase to return home the very day the au pair flew home. She refused to unpack, even though Grandpa Norman ordered her to.

What had happened? What had I
permitted
to happen? As I listened to my daughter in horror, my father strode back to us smiling and humming to himself. Then he walked right up to me, close enough that the toe of his shoe rubbed against mine.

“When I get back to the office, you know what I'm going to do, Henry?” he said smiling in a breathy whisper so the girls couldn't hear him.

“No, what?”

“I'm calling my lawyer. And I'm going to have them taken away from you for good,” he said.

“What?!” I said. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You're not raising your children properly.”

“‘Properly?'” I shouted. I wanted to rush and kill him, but was paralyzed, unable to move. An old, familiar feeling washed over me—trembling impotence.

“You fucking bastard!” I suddenly blurted out loud. Before I could think, the paralysis was gone, and my hands flew to the lapels of his sports jacket, twisting and grinding the silk between my fingers. Slowly, I removed my hands from his jacket and clenched my fists. It was the first time I ever raised my hands to my father, but at that moment I wondered why it had taken me so long. I was in the presence of pure evil. I didn't care if it was lymphoma, impotence, senility—whatever. He wanted to obliterate me as a human being, destroy me and my children, and I was going to have to kill him.