The Poison Tree (7 page)

“Baby, you're the greatest!”

I turned the set off.

That night, my parents must have come home separately. They kissed and made up, sort of like on TV. She called him “Normie.” She did that when they were affectionate. Then Dad laid out his tennis things for Sunday's game, and discovered the mashed potatoes and went crazy. He slapped her and we watched him drag her body through the dining room by her hair. He ordered us to stay in our room and shut the door. We obeyed. We heard our mother screaming “You pock-faced prick!” daring him to lay another finger on her. We listened as he threw her bodily out into the hallway outside the apartment, slamming the door. Bobby and I sat on our beds holding hands in silence as Mom banged on the door and screamed for the police. The police never came, and after what seemed like hours, the banging stopped. Robert fell asleep. Later, I heard the door open softly. Then there was silence.

And this was what I had been foolish enough to tell Grandma when she handed me that ten dollar bill on my birthday.

Now, everything I have touched so far on or near my father's desk, I have put back in its proper place. I'm about to leave, key in hand, and suddenly
recall why I've entered his apartment in the first place. I've been sent to find a small leather address book and bring it back to him in the hospital. It's there, just as he said it would be, in the left-hand drawer of his desk, on top of a stack of business cards and legal pads. I open the book and check for Fionna Bingley's address, just to be sure it's there. The address is written in her own sophisticated British handwriting.

I close the drawer again, but it jams. After more futile attempts to return it to its proper place in the desk, I lift out the drawer and compare it with its twin on the other side. They do not seem to match. I stick my hand inside the dark hole and feel around with a twinge of unreasonable fear. Will my hand get bitten or lost in there? I press on and touch something odd, a piece of wood, and another drawer springs open—a secret compartment! I open it and shudder. I am cold, feverish. I am relieved that this second drawer is empty; empty that is, except for a slim cream-colored leather portfolio trimmed in gold with initials embossed: NIS. I hold it in my hand, wondering whether to open the clasp. I start to put it away, like I have with the rest of the photos and menus and invitations, but I can't.

I release the clasp and open it. What I find inside is an assortment—no, not an assortment—a collection of twenty-eight, 4x6 inch, black and white Polaroid photographs, most going back more than fifteen years, each precisely dated and numbered. My breath catches in my throat, and my chest cavity is invaded with a burning sensation. A corrosive heat seeps into my stomach and begins to spread. All the Polaroid photos are in black and white, and all have the same delicately scalloped edges. They remind me of his white porcelain cup sitting politely on its wire rack in the kitchen.

I pick up the first photograph. It is of a woman. I think I recognize her. But I'm not sure. She is on all fours in the middle of my father's bed, the same bed I am sitting on now. She is naked and bound by rope, but the rope does not seem like it has been drawn especially tight. It feels like it's part of a ritual, rather than a crime. The woman smiles a goofy, embarrassed grin. Her smile is what most disturbs me. It suggests participation in a sexual game, rather than violation. Yet the look on her face indicates the game may have gone on too long, or she no longer wants to play, or maybe, does not want this photograph taken. Maybe she is ashamed and wants this whole thing to stop. Maybe the photographer says just one more picture. Just this last one.
I turn over the photo and see there are several more of the same woman in various poses. In one there is a red whip; in another a dildo. As I sift through them, I realize that there are a great number of women, most bound, most in similar poses, all with similar smiles. They are smiles of resignation and humiliation. I am trembling and feel afraid in a way I have never been since early childhood. This is not simply discovering a secret stash of pornography. This is something else. These pictures remind me of something crucial about me, of my father's treatment of me; they make me feel a sense of personal shame in a way that is clearly disproportionate to the vulgar photos themselves. What could that be?

I phone my wife in the Netherlands. Patty is still home where we live with our three small children in a 19th century canal house in the sleepy, university town of Leiden, The Netherlands, population 150,000. I teach English literature at Leiden University, one of northern Europe's oldest universities, founded in 1575. I relish the sense of European history and culture that touches me each day on my walks to and from the Pieterskerk, or biking along the Witte Singel to work. My office at the university is minutes from the house where Rembrandt was born, and a bust of Leiden's most famous citizen greets me each day as I cycle past. That is why I have stayed in Holland for more than a decade now, and why my children have been born there. It is a world that feels solid and stationary, so different from the violent sounds and smells of the New York in which I grew up.

Patty realizes instantly that I have not called to ask about her or the kids. She knows this as soon as she hears my voice.

“What is it?”

“It's nothing. I'd like to speak to the kids.”

She puts my son on the phone. Then I ask to speak to the two girls. Jerusha is five; Natasha barely three. I need to hear their voices. Remember the difference between my present there in Holland and my past in New York.

She returns to the phone and pointedly asks, “So, what is it?”

“Nothing,” I say, but of course she knows I'm lying. I just can't tell her yet because I don't yet know myself. But her superior knowledge makes me feel that much more defensive.

“Can you send the children upstairs?”

“Why? Why should I send them upstairs?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, what is it?” she asks again, impatience creeping into her voice. “I know you didn't call just to find out how I'm doing.”

I'm nervous. This phone call, which I hoped would act as a sedative, is instead increasing my anxiety. My throat constricts. I'm angry. About to say something nasty, something I'll regret. I choke down the impulse.

“I came up to my father's apartment to find something, an address book—and instead, I think, I think …”

“What did you find?”

“Look, let me tell it! Stop interrupting! I've been looking through … old photographs, and papers, and things.”

“What things?”

I don't feel comfortable talking to her anymore. This phone call has been a terrible mistake. I called to ask for help, but the problem is mine, and I'm unable to face it. I don't really want to talk about my father, or my parents—or anything else. Anyway, I realize there's really nothing to say.

I change the subject. “You remember Fionna … Fionna Bingley? Well, she just had a child in London. And my father wants to write her, so I had to come up here and look for his—”

“Well, that's really very interesting,” she says. There is profound sarcasm in her voice. I know she remembers the string of miserable vacations we had with my father and his girlfriend in the south of France, Portugal, and St. Martin. Fionna Bingley was my father's mistress in those days, and although several years younger than me, she treated me with condescension, correcting me on my French, and pointedly remarking on my inability to drive the little stick shift Renault they rented in Provence. The power dynamic was strange, and those vacations, which seemed to promise luxury, sun, and relaxation, were filled with scenes of raw anger and suppressed tension as my father repeatedly questioned the priority I unaccountably gave to my children's meals or bedtimes. The worst part was how I transformed myself back into my father's son. No matter where we were, I reverted to a frightened little boy in his presence.

“What did you mean by ‘interesting'?” I ask, angry now, turning against her. Why?

“It just is. Interesting, isn't it?”

“Listen. I can't talk right now.” The next thing out of my mouth, I know, will be ugly.

“I knew it,” she said.

“Knew what? What the hell are you talking about?” I shout.

“I knew it!” she repeats. “He's disgusting—your father.”

“How—? What do you know about it?” I respond, awkwardly. What has she intuited, over there on the other side of the world where our cozy, Dutch home looks out on a sleepy canal? She is in the Netherlands, thousands of miles from New York. Yet she knows that something … something has transpired … something about which I am still ignorant.

“How can you
not
know about it?” she says mysteriously.

I hang up the phone.

I am in New York City, the city of my birth, my childhood. There should be countless people to speak to, myriad places to visit. But there is no one; everyone is either dead or has moved away. I should have destroyed those photos immediately. But I have not done so. I put them back in their secret hiding place, and for some reason I feel almost as though I'm in hiding myself. I wonder, what if he should return from the hospital and find the photos missing? What if he somehow discovers that I have seen them?

I make my way through his apartment. As I walk out the door, I slam it behind me. I emerge on 2nd Avenue still holding the key in my hand.

I walk to the Eldorado where Grandma once lived. I need to forget about what I have seen, immerse myself in something different. During junior high, and well into high school, I visited Grandma all the time. She was my refuge and sanctuary, and always had a meal and a strange, compelling story to tell. Besides, I knew the walk would do me good. But I stopped and recalled the one thing I was absolutely forbidden to do as a child. Her words came to mind.

“Walking through Central Park, especially at sundown, is the most dangerous thing you can do,” she warned. “Remember, in Central Park at night there are gangs of Puerto Ricans and Blacks who roam freely. You'll
be robbed, maybe murdered.” When I shrugged this off as crazy, she said: “Good, go get yourself killed. Be my guest.”

So now, as an adult, I find myself following her advice. I walk uptown to 86th Street, then hop in a cab rather than walk through the park.

I had been held up on two occasions by the time I turned ten. The first time was when I was only four. My mother gave me a dollar bill, and I held it clenched in my fist as I rode the mechanical bucking bronco outside Prexy's on 115th Street, right next to Columbia University. Prexy's was “Home of the Hamburger with the College Education,” and featured a sign with a grinning hamburger wearing a mortarboard tilted at a rakish angle. It was autumn, and I had on a light blue suit with matching cap. My mother deposited a nickel in the bronco's flank, and left me peacefully rocking back and forth waving the dollar while she went into the drugstore. That's how safe it was in 1953. Then two kids, maybe fourteen years old, came over and one of them told me to show them my dollar. I handed it to him, of course. The boy wasn't really menacing—he probably just thought he might as well try, since I was stupid enough to sit there rocking, waving money for the whole world to see. The other kid asked how I liked the ride, and I started crying as soon as I realized he wasn't giving the money back.

Mom came racing out to see why I was crying, and when I told her they had taken my dollar, she grabbed the kid nearest me, and seeing his comrade take off, shouted, “You watch this one, Henry; I'll get the other!” While she ran down the street to chase the other boy, the criminal in my care simply smiled at the absurdity of my “guarding” him and walked slowly away, leaving me howling louder than before. About fifteen minutes later, my mom came back holding a dollar bill in her gloved hand. I always assumed she had nabbed the crook and made him hand it over. She was Supermom. “All's well that ends well,” she said, citing Shakespeare. It never occurred to me that she might have taken another dollar from her purse to stop my bawling, or how strange it was that she assumed I could safely manage to corral the fourteen year old she had entrusted in my care.

The second robbery happened a few years later. A bunch of us kids were in a nearby playground playing baseball. The playground had been almost deserted by the mothers and baby carriages because it had begun to rain. As the rain continued, we played with a kind of ritualized intensity that was
unique in the annals of playground baseball. The reason was simple: our game was enclosed by an iron fence. For city kids, there was no Little League, and that fence gave our game the heightened feel of Yankee Stadium. It was in that game that, for the first time, I hit a home run over a real fence. As soon as it sailed over the iron railing, I went into my Mickey Mantle trot for the first time in public. I remember the wonderful soft thud as ball met bat, as though I were swinging through air. I slowly circled the bases with everyone watching, except Richie, who had the demeaning task of fetching my home-run ball on the other side of the fence. It was a game for the ages; even Jimmy—uncoordinated, bespectacled, and eternally relegated to right field—somehow managed to smack a double that one-hopped the fence that day.

While we were in the field, a small group of Puerto Rican kids congregated on the periphery of the playground—a sure sign of trouble. They had a small Scottish terrier with them who yapped and snapped at the raindrops. The rain came down harder and harder, but as it was only the seventh inning, we had to finish. After all, we might never get another chance to play ball in an enclosed yard ever again. If it had been nice weather, there would have been moms and kids around, and we could never have played unfettered. So we played on, ignoring the downpour, and the ring of nasty-looking kids outside. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, during the eighth inning, the gang of Puerto Ricans entered the playground. I was nervous, but didn't want to show it for fear of being called “Faggot!” and ridiculed for weeks, if not years.