Unknown - The Genius

Gradually Tony assumed responsibility for all the parts of David’s job that David didn’t enjoy doing; and then he came to do the same for the rest of David’s life. It was Tony who did the hiring and the firing. It was Tony who managed the press; it was Tony who picked out a present for Bertha on her sixty-fifth birthday. It was Tony who stood by the graveside when David buried her, and when the terrible surprise came, it was Tony who went to Albany to fetch the secret.

DAVID INSISTED ON AUTONOMY. That, he told Tony, was the root of the problem: his parents had considered Victor unable to fend for himself, when it was precisely the institutionalization that had made him dependent in the first place. He had to learn self-reliance, learn to make his own decisions, to take care of his own shopping and to clean his own apartment. At first, of course, they would check on him. But the goal was to make themselves obsolete. Considering himself a liberator, David unconsciously parroted the era’s Ken Keseyish ethos; extolling the value of living and dying by one’s own choices, he brought the lessons of his searingly lonely childhood to bear on one who, he now realizes, might not have been equipped to handle them. And he chose to ignore the arrangment’s built-in contradiction: declaring Victor independent while supplying his apartment and his income and even a safety net, in the form of Tony Wexler, who had been ordered to stay away once he determined that Victor wasn’t going to starve to death or run naked in the street.

And there was another contradiction, as well: why go to the trouble of pulling Victor out of seclusion—only to hide him away again? In atoning for his parents’ sins, David recapitulated them. For nearly a quarter-century the secret had been a source of shame, the fuel for lies; did he really believe that stashing Victor in Queens would end that cycle? What did he really want, transparency or secrecy?

If, in 1965, you asked David to describe himself, he would have said calm, methodical, the opposite of everything knee-jerk he resented in his mother. But the truth is that in middle age, as he came fully into his wealth, relying more and more on others to handle the nitty-gritty, he had become her son: unable to countenance the notion that his snap judgment might be wrong, unwilling to involve himself in the execution, content to express his will and consider it done. At forty he hated and feared nothing more than “logistics,” and his whole life had contorted to accommodate this fear. If he didn’t want to look someone in the eye and tell them they no longer had a job, he didn’t have to. If he didn’t want to cope with the gymnastics of keeping Victor’s identity a secret—even from the Muller Courts management—who would force him? Tony took care of everything, and Tony never complained. In adopting this modus operandi, David had transformed himself into a kind of minor despot; and although generally his edicts went off without a hitch, he never misstepped as badly as he did with Victor Cracke—unless it was in dealing with his youngest son, the one who wouldn’t fall into line.

HIS FIRST THREE MARRIAGES had been unmitigated disasters, and he had sworn off a fourth when he met Nadine at a charity event. It was 1968; he was twenty-two years her senior, cranky, misanthropic, known among women as a meat grinder. She was bright, splendid, charming—in all ways wrong for him. She actually intimidated him—him, one of the richest men in New York!—and upon introduction, he was deliberately cold. She made a joke about the cause being feted and picked a piece of lint from his lapel, igniting within him a fierce desire that burned until her oncologist admitted that nothing more could be done.

Unaccustomed to failure, David flew her around the world in search of specialists; and though she played along, when she was gone, he tore himself up for having exhausted her. If he had just let her go in peace … He grew surly, snappish, interpreting people’s assurances of eventual recovery as a sign that they didn’t understand how different she’d been. How could he hope to make them see? It’s a feeling no one can contain in words, certainly not David. He didn’t want to explain himself to anyone. He didn’t need to. The best proof of what she’d meant to him, the living proof, was the boy.

HE HAD NOT WANTED MORE CHILDREN, considering them the downfall of his first three marriages. Supposedly a child expanded your capacity for happiness. But David saw happiness as a zero-sum game. Children threw the entire equation out of balance, and worst of all, they remained once the wives had fled, draining his energy, money, and sanity. He had no idea how to talk to them; he felt ridiculous kneeling down and asking questions he knew the answers to. He had been left to raise himself; why couldn’t they do the same? When Amelia or Edgar or Larry wanted something, he told them to put it in writing.

But despite his efforts, they grew up soft. Their mothers spoiled them, and by the time he was called on to be a father, it was too late. The boys became yes-men, unimaginative, unable to do anything except take orders given in a stern voice. He made them vice presidents. Amelia didn’t do much more than garden. It was good that she lived overseas.

He had enough problems. Why add another into the mix?

“I’m too old.”

Nadine said, “I’m not.”

“I’m a lousy father.”

“You’ll be a better one this time.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ll help you.”

“I don’t want to be a better father,” he said. “I’m happy being a lousy father.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“You don’t,” she said.

“Nadine,” he said. “I have enough experience to know that I am not fit to raise children.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

He wasn’t afraid of anything. Fear is what you feel when something bad might happen. He knew for a fact that it would. What he felt was doomed. He had been here before.

“I love you,” she said. “This is what I want. Please don’t argue with me.”

He said nothing.

“Please,” she said.

HE COULDN’T DENY HER FOREVER. All she had to do was stop asking outright.

At her request he tried to be a better father. Take him out, she said. Take him somewhere fun. David didn’t know where to go, and Nadine refused to spoonfeed him. She told him to use his imagination. But at three he had played alone in his room. At three, he had begun to read; he could hold a violin. He had no idea what normal three-year-old children did.

He took him to the office, where he tried to interest him in plastic models of buildings yet to be constructed. He showed him a planned waterfront in Toronto. He showed him two shopping malls in New Jersey. He thought it was going well until his secretary told him that the child was clearly bored to death. At her suggestion David took him instead to the Museum of Natural History. Although he had a seat on the board of directors, he stood in line, like a normal father might, and bought three tickets: one for himself, one for the boy, and one for the nanny who had been tagging along silently all morning. Look, David said to his son. He pointed to a dinosaur skeleton. The boy began to cry. David tried to distract him with other exhibits but the dam had broken. The boy cried; he was inconsolable; he didn’t stop until they’d gotten back to the house on Fifth and David handed him off to his mother, saying, Take him, please.

That was the last time he tried to be a better father.

But motherhood became Nadine, very much, too much, and everything he’d known would happen began to happen. He felt her drift away from him and he was powerless to stop it. Hadn’t he told her? He had; he’d warned her. She hadn’t known any better—but he had, and he had warned her. He should have been more firm. He should have told her to wait five years, see if she still felt the same way, if she still wanted to jeopardize everything.