“Sounds right. How’s it going with Ben?”
“Eking along. The middle-of-the-night calls freak Jay out, and then she’s cranky in the morning. I’ve started frequently sleeping on the futon in my room.” Moses, thinking that might sound suspicious, quickly added, “Not that often. I mean we’re … you know.” He wasn’t about to admit that their sex life had diminished considerably, a fact he skirted around even with Butterworth. “She supports the therapy. He and I are doing some traditional in-office work, too.”
“You look healthy. Not so fragile.”
“Doing some yoga. I’m lousy at it, but overall, doing okay. Blood tests have been good.”
“Excellent … Any chance I’m going to be an uncle?”
Moses looked up and stared at the seaside painting on the wall. He was sorry he even hinted at the possibility during their talks while he was in the hospital.
“Sorry, Mose, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“We reconsidered it but …” He didn’t finish his sentence. If he had, it would’ve gone like this: I’m still afraid I’m going to die soon and I don’t want my kid to be fatherless at three years old and I don’t think Jay wants that responsibility and we’re cold-shoulder arguing over nothing, which is not a good atmosphere and I’m going to be fifty and she forty … Instead, Moses changed the subject. “What is so urgent about meeting up?”
“We’re embarking on a world tour to promote Noncommittal. I’m leaving in October and I’ll be gone off and on for about two years. It’s the Around the World in 800 Days tour.”
For the past two years, Alchemy and the band, with Absurda’s replacement Silky Trespass, former guitarist of the Come Queens, had been touring the States. Moses and Jay did not mention seeing them when they played L.A.
“Have you discussed seeing your father with Ben?”
Moses didn’t understand what seeing his father had to do with the Insatiables going on tour. “Yes, and according to Sidonna Cherry, this guy Lively said he is still willing to allow an audience,” Moses said sarcastically.
“Laban Lively?”
“You know Lively?” Neither of them had mentioned Lively to the other before.
“Yessiree. We first met when I was a kid and I bit his ankle just before Salome stabbed him with box cutters.”
Moses had read about this incident, but it had omitted Lively’s name and Alchemy’s biting Lively. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “And you wonder why I’m afraid to see her.”
“Oh, no, I don’t wonder at all.” Alchemy scrunched his eyebrows and shook his head. “She also managed to slice her hands before Lively slapped her unconscious and they took her away to Collier Layne.”
“You saw all this?”
“Most vivid memory of my childhood. When they took her away was the last time I cried, until Absurda died.”
“Alchemy, I’m so sorry.”
“So it goes.”
Moses rolled his lips together, pressed them against his teeth, and lowered his eyes. Each time he peered into the carnage of Salome’s madness and the burdens her affliction cast upon Alchemy, he felt more deeply bonded to his brother than he could have ever imagined.
“So Lively is friends with your father?”
“Seems so. Lively insinuated that he was WWII military intelligence and they met during the war and continued a business affiliation ever since.”
“Salome says Lively is CIA. What? Mose, you look distressed.”
“I’ve been more obsessed about my father than anything else in my life. And now when all I must do is act and ask … I can’t …” Moses halted, his words stuck in this throat. “Every time I seriously consider making plans to meet either one of them … I think about my mom, Hannah, I really miss her … and I become almost cataleptic.”
“Shit, Mose. What I’m going to say might help you. Might make it worse.”
“Wh-at?” A tremor crept into Moses’s voice.
Alchemy gulped down his beer. “Mose, this is tough. Salome is going to have a major exhibition at the Hammer Museum. Some new work. Some old. Not happening for maybe two, three years. She’ll be visiting often. I wanted to give you enough time to absorb it. Mull it over. Or get out of town.”
Moses cupped both of his hands around his glass of lemonade. “Thanks. I think. Jay would’ve probably found out. I wonder if she’s already heard rumors.”
“It’s bound to get around the art world.”
“I’ve searched Salome on the Net and cross-examined Jay about her art. I wish Salome’s parents were alive. Maybe I could have asked them about my ‘death.’ ”
“Me, too. For lots of reasons.”
“I’m still terrified of confronting her.”
“Wish I could say your fear is unwarranted.” Alchemy stood up. “I gotta use the facilities and get another beer and taco. You want something?”
Moses shook his head, overcome by a daymare:
Slipping and sliding along a jagged cliff, I walk into the sky, but instead of falling, I float-crash along. Suddenly, I begin to plunge through the atmosphere. I’m screaming but no words come out. I smash into the ground and my body, like a rocket, burrows deeper until I crash in a dark mine. Everything in my life is being sucked into the mine on top of me — Jay, our house, cars, clothes, books, and CDs. Someone is sealing the mine and burying me alive. From aboveground I hear the laughter of the dybbuk Shalom, — Don’t miss your last chance.
Gasping for air, I yell, — To do what?
“Yo, Mose. Mose?”
Moses looked at Alchemy vacantly.
— I warned you …
“Whew. I’m surmising you’ve inherited the Savant dream-state gene.”
“Suppose so.”
Alchemy didn’t inquire further, and Moses didn’t want to hear any more about his inheritance. “Bro, brought you a beer. Sorry if I upset the balance.”
“No worries. I appreciate the heads-up. So, can I ask a question about your father?
“Shoot.”
“You think I should see her and Teumer, but you never want to see Phillip Bent again?”
Alchemy scarfed down another taco. “It’s not the same. Salome is your mother. It might be good for her, since no one seems to know what really went down. She wanted you. And your other mom is gone. With Teumer, shit, I get that. It’s hard for me to admit, but yeah, I wanted to meet my father. When I did, like I told you, he was a prick who has never changed. Fuck it, Mose, no one understands your hesitation more than I do. I know what it’s like to be unwanted. I also understand that what I’m going to say is no fun to hear.” Alchemy took his time and took two more gulps of his beer. “Salome never got over your death.”
“I guessed that, only I’m trapped between guilt, curiosity, and fear of a rejection that will crush me. Let me cogitate.”
“Sure.” Alchemy lifted his beer bottle. Moses lifted his. Alchemy began, “To …” His eyes shifted toward the book still on the table. In a brotherly epiphany, they simultaneously said, “… the disinherited.”
34 THE LAMENTATIONS OF MALCOLM TEUMER, I (2006)
Pleased to Meet You
Malcolm Teumer took pride in his ability to outwit and outlive the tormentors who had desired his death for nearly sixty years. If he were to die now, approaching his eighty-fourth birthday, his final word would be: victory. Still, he had been agitated when Laban announced that the second son of Salome Savant sought an audience. Better him than Moses, he thought.
The night before, he had watched the Insatiables’ live Globo TV concert broadcast with three of his thirteen grandchildren. Such noise. Not music. He left them for another room, where he muted the sound on the TV. He examined this Alchemy who roused and exploited the primitive needs of the masses with an admirable élan. Now Malcolm looked forward to their encounter.