Two Time

TWENTY-THREE

Mom’s dating. Old fart, old money, old brain.

Me hurting. New guy, new money, new life.

Till he dumps me, same old shit. Think I’ll

take up drinking, Daddy-style.

I wrote her back:

Dad’s dating, too. Stick with vodka, less of a hangover.

WITHOUT AMANDA’S HELP it took longer to lay down the rest of the subroof, but she had a different job to do that day, lying on her chaise lounge with only bikini bottoms and a trade paperback as defense against the pounding July sun, providing an incentive for frequent water breaks and a considerable upgrade in the aesthetic character of the neighborhood.

The addition was now a defined building, a plywood box with a roof jutting perpendicular from the ridge line of the original house. I’d waited for this stage to stand back and take it all in, deferring disappointment until it was too late to do anything about it. But it looked okay. I don’t know what my father would have thought. He had no design sense as far as I knew, though I could hear him growling that I’d messed up the look of the place, even though all the angles were his angles, established by feel and eye over fifty years ago.

I wasn’t sure why I’d starting building it in the first place. I’d lived with what I had for almost five years. I didn’t want or need much more than the screened-in front porch with a kitchen stuck to it, and two miniature bedrooms, one that was my parents’ and the other a glorified closet where my sister and I slept on bunk beds, both paneled in Masonite and lit by an assortment of randomly sized windows retrieved from surplus bins, or possibly stolen off job sites up island in the dead of night and hauled out east, old man Semple’s assessment of my father’s honesty notwithstanding. But there it was, a product of physical effort unencumbered by self-reflection or analysis, which I was happy to defer to some indefinite time in the future.

By the time I’d showered and climbed into clean clothes, Amanda had switched over to my Adirondacks, still lined up along the breakwater, box seats for the evening’s performance in the sky. The grandiflora was coming into bloom, the leggy stems curved groundward under the weight of giant balls of tiny white petals, shaded with pink and blue hues cast off by the light show over on the horizon. The Little Peconic was rendered passive by the innervating south-southwesterlies that coasted in over the South Fork from the Atlantic Ocean, the weak trails of the African trade winds that once spent their energy sweeping in rapacious Caucasians and now merely cooled their Niveasoaked skin as they sprawled across the Caribbean and up the East Coast. The only sailboats within view were drifting upright, their sails ballooning and collapsing as the evening zephyrs taunted with the possibility of a freshening evening breeze. Others had wisely given up the quest and were ghosting under power with bare poles to the next anchorage or back to home moorings. A yellow-and-orange cigarette boat shot across the bay, a steady streak over still waters, its rumble of exhaust tones felt as much as heard through the weathered slats of the Adirondacks, leaving behind a slim white wake that looked from a distance like a foamy contrail.

Amanda had brought a little side table with her, on which she’d stocked all the necessary provisions. She wore a white cotton beach shift and her new favorite wraparound sunglasses. Having abandoned the book, she was calmly watching the bay when I approached.

“I could see you finished the roof. I thought that called for a celebration.”

“Just the ply, but who’s counting.”

“When do you think you’ll be all finished?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a full hold on expectations.”

“And that’s news?”

“I liked your tanning outfit, what there was of it.”

“So you still believe repression, avoidance and denial are effective operating strategies? Doesn’t leave much to expect.”

“Unavoidably.”

I thought there must have been a time when all I had were expectations, probably in the form of goals and ambitions. Maybe not fully formed, more like focused impulses that thrust me through successive days and nights of compulsive determination and professional tumult. But all that was getting harder to remember now. Probably because I’d spent the last five years determined to repress, avoid and deny it all ever happened, which had worked to the extent that specific images and streams of anxious recollection had dissipated, now replaced by a vague hollow pain, an awareness that much had passed raucously through my consciousness, leaving only impressions of destruction, free floating and indistinct, the phantoms of experience.

“You’re not asking,” said Amanda, “but I’d like you to know I’ve adopted your strategy, at least for the time being.”

“It’s the air at the tip of Oak Point. Gets to everybody eventually.”

Amanda had been raised by her single mother on a tight budget. Not quite poor, but lean, stuck along the fringes where my own family lived. She’d lived a comfortable life with Roy financially anyway, but now that she’d come into her inheritance she could afford to withhold any expectations she wanted to.

“You haven’t asked me what I’m going to do with Reginas house,” she said.

The muscles along the back of my neck and across my shoulders stiffened in that dreary involuntary way they often did when topics arose that I’d rather avoid.

“Your house, you mean.”

“I’m not going to knock it down, or even alter the exterior dimensions. In fact, for now, I’m keeping it just the way it is. If you ever come inside you’ll see. Her nephew took all her furniture. I brought in just enough. Nothing I care about, strictly utilitarian. So when I leave, if I leave, I don’t have to care about what’s left behind.”

“You’ll need a new furnace. Circulating fan and heat exchanger are on their last legs.”

“My, you are a champion avoider,” she said.

“Just leading by example. More wine?”

I did get to see the inside of her house that night, and she was true to her word. She’d stripped out all the furniture, dug up the rugs and whitewashed the walls. I was glad for it. I didn’t want to be reminded of Regina any more than I had to. The interior spaces felt like they’d doubled in size, and as she said, they were furnished in a spare and simple style that would be easy to forget. Though my mother would have thought it all decadently luxurious. An air of sanctuary mingled with one of impermanence, which likely expressed the climate of Amanda’s mind. Whatever effect that had on my own mind, I couldn’t tell, since my recently discussed life scheme was in full operation. I did like sitting on her own version of the screened-in porch, and wandering along circuitous and mostly meaningless conversational pathways. I liked her loose lavender translucent dress and bare feet, and noticing the beginnings of razor-thin crow’s-feet beside her eyes formed solely by an occasional laugh, or a particular breed of smile I could generate with a particular style of wisecrack. Eddie, bribed into stupefaction by cheese and duck pâté, slept in a ball on a cushioned wicker chair. Out of deference to me, I’m sure, Oscar Peterson was playing somewhere in the house, and when I took the trouble to search for it I seemed to have misplaced that ugly hollow pain. Or its location inside my chest had been appropriated by something else, though in no way did I want to think about what that could be.

Trouble, I thought, as she took my hand and led me to another part of the house. I knew it the moment I first saw her car in Reginas driveway. More trouble than I’d ever be equipped to endure.

—

Jackie Swaitkowski showed up the next day for a road trip we’d been planning. The Grand Prix was all ready to go, having been thoroughly cleaned and maintained by a team of crack performance artists. Eddie was happy to live outside, using a little covert dog hatch to get in and out of the house, but I felt better having Amanda keep an eye on him, bringing him in her house if it got late. Not a hard sell given the leftover cheese and pâté.

By way of preparation I’d filled a large thermos full of freshly ground Viennese cinnamon from the coffee place on the corner and cleaned up a travel mug for Jackie, which she accepted gracefully. She had her rebellious hair throttled into a ponytail and wore a spiffy light oxford-cloth shirt and khaki shorts outfit that made her look like a recent graduate of an exclusive women’s boarding school. Or a recently expelled undergraduate lobbying for readmission, a far more likely scenario.

She’d done the best she could with her eye patch and contusions. For her, the trip would end with me dropping her off at NYU Medical Center where they were supposed to put her face all the way back to the one she had before joining me for lunch on the Windsong deck. I coaxed her into letting me drive her in by describing some stops we could make along the way, and promising not to give her a pep talk or act in any way that could be construed as sensitive or nurturing.

“Stick to your strengths,” she’d said to me. “Make the coffee, drive your lunatic car, offend people we meet along the way.”

Inspired by her wardrobe, I picked out a pair of khakis and a blue shirt of my own.

“Team uniforms.”

It was early in the morning. The sky was overcast, but bright enough to drench the scrub oak and maple of North Sea in rich shadowless light. We drove south out to Montauk Highway where it turned into Route 27, the four-lane highway that formed a bridge to the west over which City people and tradesmen crossed the pine barrens. But only stayed there long enough to pick up Route 24 north to Riverhead, where I thought I could easily find the Sisters of Mercy home where my mother had lived out the last few years of her life, and where Gabe Szwit and Appolonia had told me Mrs. Eldridge was living out hers.

Jackie and I had debated the wisdom of getting Butch’s or even Gabe’s okay to see her, then decided it would be easier to explain later than get permission. Jackie gamely asserted some legal theory on why we didn’t need to ask, which was good enough for me. I was more preoccupied anyway with the prospect of revisiting a place I thought I’d never have to see again. Voluntarily.

It wasn’t the Sisters’ fault. They ran as good a home as you could. It was the sight and sound of all that human wreckage, sick and exhausted souls waiting it out, or simply bewildered to find themselves wherever they thought they were. My mother never knew, or if she did, she was determined not to share that knowledge with me.

By the time we hit the incongruous four-lane road that passed the crotch of the Great Peconic Bay, the sun had burned off the morning haze and was now busy burning up the grasslands and vineyards of the North Fork. We followed it up to Sound Avenue, then went west until we came to a complex of three-story brick buildings with white trim, and discreet notices of the home’s ecclesiastical affiliations.

I crossed myself and found a place to park.

The reception desk sat in the middle of a small foyer. An overweight white guy in a white shirt and tie with a photo ID badge clipped to his breast pocket was on duty. On the desk were a large sign-in book, a phone, a walkie-talkie and a paper plate littered with the consequences of a partially eaten corn muffin.

Jackie had done most of the prep work, so I let her take the lead.

“Hi. We’re here to see Aunt Lillian,” she told the guard, her face filled with an ingratiating smile. “Lillian Eldridge. I called ahead, they said this was a good time.”

The guard nodded.

“Oh, yeah, they’re all done with the morning routine by now. Folks’re either in their rooms or out on the patio or in the open areas with the TVs. Eldridge, is it?”

“I’m her niece Lillian. They named me after her. This is my husband, Dashiell.”

I smiled, too, and tried to look like the victim of a winter-summer romance. The guard called somebody on his walkie-talkie to check out our story, ignoring the phone on his desk. I would, too, I guess. More fun to say things like, “copy that.”

He signed off and said, “Okay I just need some identification.”

Jackie looked at me.

“You probably left your wallet in the car again, but here’s mine,” she said to the guard, dropping an official-looking photo ID in front of him. He squinted to read the fine print.

“Institute of Blepharoplasty? You got your driver’s license?”

She looked embarrassed.

“Sorry It’s all I brought. Dash likes to do all the driving,” she said, mooning at me and slipping her arm through mine to demonstrate how safe she felt with me behind the wheel.

“I always tell you to bring your purse,” I grumbled. “But what do I know.”

“At this point, not a heck of a lot,” she said, sprightly.

“That’s okay,” said the guard, seeing a way to take the side of a pretty young wife against her grouchy old husband. “This is okay. What’s blepharoplasty?”

“Eyelid surgery,” she said, signing the book. “I’ve been practicing on myself all week.”

The guard gave us each passes to clip to our shirts and a map of the facilities with Lillian’s room x-ed in. We walked the distance without challenge, passing rooms with open doors with white-haired wraiths in and out of the beds, and common rooms, the TVs blasting out advice from talk show hosts, the volume set to the viewers’ average hearing capacity.

“Wasn’t that some kind of felony you just committed back there?” I asked her.

“I don’t think you can be charged with pretending to be a member of a society that doesn’t actually exist. Or giving a false ID to a private security guard. I looked it up last night, sort of.”

“Whatever you say, Lil.”

The guard’s map brought us to a nurses’ station behind a high counter that protruded into the corridor. Two women were sitting in swivel desk chairs and deep in conversation. We waited for an opening.

“We’re here to see Lillian Eldridge,” said Jackie, waving her visitors tag.

“Isn’t that nice,” said the bigger of the two as she stood up. Bigger by a hundred pounds, carried unsteadily on legs shaped like inverted cones. Her face was round as a full moon and slick, with a yellowy, almost jaundiced tint, though warmed considerably by her happy smile. She established her balance with some effort, then offered her hand.

“What a nice surprise,” she said. “She’ll be thrilled.”

“She will?” I asked, surprised myself.

“Well, it’s been like forever. Nobody from the family ever seems to come, I’m sorry. And you’re her niece?” she asked Jackie.

“We’re from California. First chance we’ve had,” said Jackie, looking a little guilty on behalf of her impersonation.

“So you haven’t seen Butch or Jonathan?” I asked.

She thought about it.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t recall the names.”

“So how is she?” asked Jackie.

“Remarkably well, if you ask me,” she said, forthrightly “Very stable. Been that way for quite some time.”

“So how would you describe her mental state,” said Jackie. “I just want to know what to expect.”

The nurse, Maryanne by her name tag, pondered the question.

“Well, she’s not agitated, if that’s what you mean. Might seem to you perfectly normal. Medication is a miracle, especially for people as profoundly dissociative as Lillian,” she said.

“Dissociative? I’m so sorry, I don’t know what that means,” said Jackie.

“Too much time in California,” I said. “Dissociation central.”

“Doesn’t know if she’s here or not,” said Maryanne. “Can’t quite seem to get herself fixed in the world. We all drift off a little. Lillian is never able to get all the way back.”

Jackie and her assumed identity thought about that.

“Will she know who I am?” she asked Maryanne. “It’s been a few years. Will she remember?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. She has a difficult time remembering who she is herself, so it’s doubly hard to remember anyone else.”

Jackie jerked her thumb at me. “By the way, she never met Dash,” she said, and then, as if to celebrate Maryanne’s professional tact, pointed to her face, adding, “It was an accident. I’m here to have some work done at NYU. Thought, while I’m in the neighborhood …”

“You’re a doll,” said Maryanne. “Mrs. Eldridge is lucky to have you.”

“We all are,” I said, giving her waist a husbandly squeeze.

Jackie returned a glowing but not entirely sincere smile. She built on her rapport with Maryanne as we moved down the hall toward the patio where Lillian was reportedly taking in the late morning sun.

“I think they’ve done a wonderful job keeping Lillian stabilized,” I heard Maryanne tell Jackie. “I just wonder,” she added, turning down the volume of her voice so I could barely hear.

“What do you mean?”

She hesitated, maybe for dramatic effect.

“I mean, Mrs. Eldridge is seventy-eight years old. At this point, how can you tell mental pathology from simple aging? I wonder if something different should be done. But it’s not up to me. It’s really the family.”

“We’ll be talking to Arthur,” said Jackie.

“See him tonight. Just got in from LA,” I added, trying to get in on the act.

As Maryanne escorted us to Lillian’s room, I wondered if Jackie had worked up a plan for the unlikely event we’d get this far. Based on a sidelong glance, I guessed she hadn’t.

I knew it was Lillian Eldridge before we were halfway across the patio, the resemblance to Butch was so strong. Slender, but a little paunchy, long narrow face and weak jaw, curly dyed-brown hair recklessly shaped by hairpins into the type of hairdo makeup people on movie sets conceived to represent the mentally ill. Everything but the harelip and manic eyes. Instead her eyes were a bland milky gray, distant and tired. Dissociated.

She wore matching pale lavender sweatpants and sweatshirt and clean white Nikes, cleaving to the fashion standards at the Sisters of Mercy home.

Maryanne strode up to her and put her arm over the old lady’s shoulders.

“Hey Lillian,” she said, looking back at Jackie as she approached. “Do you remember Lillian?”

Mrs. Eldridge looked up at Maryanne, annoyed.

“Why of course I remember Lillian. What kind of a question is that?”

Maryanne was obviously pleased.

“Well, she’s here to see you. Isn’t that nice?”

Lillian was still frowning as we walked up to her. Jackie leaned down and kissed her check.

“Hi, Aunt Lillian. It’s Lillian.”

“Of course it is,” said the old woman. “Lillian’s right here. Ridiculous.”

“Lillian and her husband are going to visit for a while, okay?” asked Maryanne, the way parents do with their children.

Lillian looked at me as if to say, “What the hell is that woman talking about?”

Maryanne plowed ahead.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” she said, still in the same sing-song voice. “You have a nice visit.”

Lillian had her eyes on us intently until we pulled up a pair of chairs, at which point her gaze shifted to the rhododendron bush beside her park bench. She was shaking her head.

“Sorry to bother you,” said Jackie. “I really am.”

She looked up at us, surprised.

“You’re not bothering me. It’s that idiot nurse who thinks I don’t remember myself. What is wrong with these people?” she asked, more as a genuine question than an accusation. She looked more closely at Jackie. “Do I know you?”

“No,” said Jackie, moving her chair a little closer and resting her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We pretended to be your family so we could talk to you. I hope that’s okay.”

Lillian’s attention had drifted off again by then, but Jackie moved closer to the bench to stay in her line of sight.

“Okay?” Jackie repeated.

“I’ve got nothing else to do,” said Lillian, then laughed a self-conscious little laugh. “I’ve got nothing to do all day. Not bad work if you can get it.”

“Can I call you Lillian?” asked Jackie.

“I don’t think she’ll mind.”

“Who?”

“Lillian. You’re sitting on her, you should know.”

Jackie, who was now sitting on the park bench stroking the old lady’s shoulder, involuntarily sat up part of the way.

“I am?”

“It’s okay. I just keep her over there. Sometimes I keep her in the room. She’s not a lot of bother.” She leaned closer to Jackie. “Not terribly bright,” she said, confidentially.

“You seem awfully bright.”

“I do? Really. Interesting. Who’s Prince Charming?” she asked, looking at me.

“A. friend of mine.”

“Doesn’t say much.”

“He would if he could think of something to say. Not terribly bright.”

Lillian seemed satisfied with that.

“Not much to look at, either,” she said.

“So,” said Jackie. “How’re you doing? Everything okay? Food okay?”

Lillian picked at her sweatpants as she thought about the question.

“I don’t know. I think it’s okay. I think so.”

“You getting visitors? Arthur, Jonathan?”

“Jonathan’s with his father,” she said quickly, her attention drawn again to the fat white rhododendron petals. Jackie rubbed her arm some more, pulling her back.

“He’s there now?”

“He’s always with his father.” She held her hands up defensively, and shook her head. “I don’t argue, it’s up to them.”

“And where’s Arthur?”

“I don’t know. With his wife. He’s married. You could tell him to come see me more often. I don’t like to prod, but I’m not going to be around forever.”

A nun in a pure white outfit rolled a cart out of the building and across the patio’s brick pavers. The noise and the sight of a tall chrome coffee percolator killed my interest in the conversation. I almost broke an ankle getting out of my chair to queue up with the visitors and residents nimble and caffeine-addicted enough to make the effort. Jackie and Lillian continued their conversation while I was gone.

When I got back Lillian was saying, “I wish there were more trees. I can hardly see any from my room. I like to lie in bed in the morning and look at trees, but that’s not possible if there are none.”

“You had a lot of trees in Shirley?” Jackie asked.

“Arthur’s father loved trees. Wept when he had to cut one down.”

“Jonathan, too?”

“I don’t know,” she looked disturbed by the thought. “I suppose he would, being with his father.”

“So, the boy’s father and you were separated,” said Jackie. “I’m sorry.”

“They go,” said Lillian. “You know that. Everything’s fine, then they go. Just as you please.”

“I do know,” said Jackie, glowering at me, the closest representative of the offending group.

“So, Arthur stayed with you and Jonathan went with his father. That must have been hard.”

Lillian let out another one of her nervous, humorless laughs.

“What’re you going to do? If that’s what the boy wants to do? He can be anybody, anywhere he wants, I can’t help that. I think I could drink some of that coffee,” she said, pointing at my cup. I got her some.

“Arthur was your husband’s name, too, wasn’t it?” asked Jackie.

“I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him in a while. Arthur should tell him to come see me.”

She showed the first signs of agitation, so Jackie slid back and let out a contented little breath, looking out at the gathering on the patio.

“You must like to sit here. It’s very pleasant,” she told Lillian.

“Lillian likes it here. I don’t care. I can sit in the room just as easily.”

“How does Lillian feel about Arthur? Your husband,” I asked her.

“Another country heard from.”

“She want to see him?” Jackie asked.

“Doesn’t much care for him, truth be told. He should still come and see me.”

“Could bring along Jonathan,” I suggested. I could sense Jackie tensing up, thinking I was about to blow her play.

“That’s up to Arthur.”

“Your husband.”

“No, of course not. I’m talking about Arthur.”

“Your son.”

Lillian looked at Jackie.

“You should introduce him to the rest of the family,” she whispered. “I think he’s a little confused.”

“Happens easily.”

Maryanne came back out on to the patio. She carried a clipboard and a blood pressure gauge stuffed under her arm.

“Hello, Sweetheart. Are you having a nice visit?” she asked Lillian.

“I think so. I have some coffee.”

Maryanne looked impressed.

“Well, that’s a new thing. I didn’t know you liked coffee.” She took me by the sleeve and pulled me out of earshot. “Five years I’ve been here, never saw her drink coffee.”

“Maybe we should stay for cocktail hour. Could start a whole new trend.”

“Why not. Just have to check for adverse reactions.”

“What sort of meds is she on?”

“You want to talk cocktails. Quite the mix. Mostly tranqs, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor—between the two they flatten things out a little. Not that she’s bipolar, technically, but you get a lot of the same symptoms. Anhedonia, dysphoria, depression, agitation. They’ve been prescribing antipsychotics, but I don’t know what for. She isn’t delusional.”

“I notice she’s got another Lillian hanging around with her.”

Maryanne smiled.

“Not another. The Lillian.”

“So who’re we talking to?”

“She doesn’t know.” She leaned into me, as best she could given her girth, and whispered, “That’s why she’s here.”

Maryanne gave me a clinical briefing on Lillian’s condition, which promptly took me out of my depth.

“She said I’m the one that’s confused. She’s right.”

“Welcome to my wonderful world.”

Jackie was still talking to her when we rejoined the two of them, sitting sideways Buddha-style on the bench. It didn’t seem to matter much to Lillian that we were back. She hadn’t moved and was back to picking at her clothing, though she seemed reasonably calm. I guess I would be too if I was drugged to the gills.

Jackie stood up when she saw me and Maryanne approach. She pulled me back over to where I’d just come from.

“How’s the chat?” I asked her.

“Getting a little circular. And I’m getting short on things to talk about. Kind of like my blind dates. I do all the yapping while the guy answers in monosyllables and stares out into space. Not sure what else we can learn.”

“Where did her husband live after he left? Arthur the first.”

“Riverhead. I think. Makes sense if he raised Jonathan.” She looked around the patio. “Sam, I’m getting a little paranoid.”

“Must be the ambience.”

“We’re sort of here on false pretenses. The longer we stay, the bigger the risk.”

“Is that what your research told you?”

“Not exactly research. I just tried to remember some case law before I fell asleep last night.”

While we talked we walked back over to the bench to say goodbye. Maryanne caressed the top of Lillian’s head and then escorted us back to the entrance. We were all quiet until we got to the security desk, where Jackie and I signed out and relinquished our passes. Maryanne took both our hands, joined them together, and then held them enclosed within her own two hands.

“I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it was wonderful that you spent a little time with Lillian. I honestly think it’s been over a year since I saw anybody from the family. I’m not supposed to be judgmental about the relatives, but I think it’s disgraceful. The therapeutic value of your visit might be debatable, but I like to think it makes a difference. So, if only for my own sake, thank you very much.”

“So, last year. Who came to visit?” I asked.

“The two of them, I think. The son Arthur and the lawyer. Funny name.”

“Gabriel Szwit.”

“Something like that. Funny little man. Not very pleasant.”

“They were here together?”

“Usually are. Mr. Szwit handles all the paperwork for the family. He makes a pest out of himself with the administrative people while the son sits with his mother. They don’t talk much, but I still think it’s important to spend the time.”

Even though the parking lot had the same weather as the patio within the complex of brick buildings, it seemed sunnier and the atmosphere was filled with oxygen. I took in a few hearty gulps before lighting a cigarette. Jackie was quiet, and stayed that way for about a half-hour after we got underway. That was okay with me. I didn’t want to talk much myself. The whole experience might have been easier if it hadn’t been the same place I’d stored my mother the last few years of her life. Where I’d neglected to see her as often as I should have, even though in the end she really didn’t know who I was. Like Maryanne was trying to say, it almost doesn’t matter if they know you or not, or if they seem to get anything out of seeing you sitting there in their rooms. It’s just what you’re supposed to do. It’s how you honor all those years in the past when the same scooped-out mummies fed your face and wiped your ass and put up with your wailing selfishness.

Though this was about more than just growing old. This was a brief visit with madness, a condition that had no age preference, no discrimination between the innocent and the damned. In those rare, quiet moments of pure lucidity that come fleeting past your consciousness, you can sometimes capture insights into your true nature, and in so doing, glimpse the darker potentials of your mind. For me I’d always known, and feared, what I sensed was close proximity to genuine insanity. That my father’s abiding fury was more than simple rage, that it was an indicator, a symptom of incipient pathology, that died stillborn with him on the floor of a filthy restroom at the back of a ratty bar in the Bronx, and that the same embryonic madness festers within me, darkly watchful, waiting to be born.