November 3, 2007--Saturday Story: Mt. Lebanon--The End (Final Part)

In Part Five Lloyd Zazlo heard his father’s version of the family saga. Not surprisingly, it differed considerably from his mother’s. Yes, they did meet as Lloyd had heard; yes his father recognized that what they found attractive, and even intoxicating, was the promise that they would help lead each other to lives very different from the conventional ones that were being charted for them by their respective families. But that ardor, that promise was quickly dissipated when Lloyd’s father entered into a series of failed business ventures and soon found himself feeling defeated and, in his view, more and more the recipient of his mother’s disappointment and eventual scorn. He, to retaliate, acknowledged that he intentionally pulled himself back from her, including not submitting to her desire to begin a family; and as things worsened turned passive aggressive, punishing her in this way for her disavowal of him. Lloyd, he said, had rightly seen this infecting their marriage. He had even chosen to write about it. But, in spite of his best efforts to use protection, Lloyd was conceived, and against his expectations, his father confessed to wanting to be a loving father, But this also was not to be since his mother, in his view, took such complete possession of Lloyd, claiming that he was her son alone, that he felt excluded. He then proceeded to stun Lloyd by revealing that this was the source of his deepest feelings of loss; and, though seemingly unnatural, he became jealous of his own son and turned much of his frustration and anger toward his first born. We left them with Lloyd skeptical about this but again sobbing at a parent’s grave while his father said he had yet one more thing to discuss—Rona.

And thus in Part Six, the final part of Mt. Lebanon—The End, we find Lloyd again quivering as . . .”

“I’m talking now about Rona. About you and Rona.”

This caught me so off guard that I almost fainted. But I quickly realized that, thankfully, this would have to be brief since they would be closing the gates to Mt. Lebanon is fewer than fifteen minutes. More than anything else, I didn’t want to get locked in there for the night. I had heard stories that this had happened to some visitors. And who knows what might have happened to them.

“That Lydia wife of yours. That was her name, am I correct?” If this was going to take us back to my first disastrous marriage, whether they locked the gates or not, I would be there all night.

“Yes, that was her name. And . . .?”

“I never liked her very much.”

“Indeed that was abundantly evident. You stopped talking to her entirely during the last five years we were together.”

“In fact, I had no use for her. What was she anyway? A dancer? What kind of a thing is that to do for a grown person?”

“A good thing as far as I was concerned, but it’s true we did have our differences and things didn’t work out.”

“Differences? You certainly have a way with understatements. You never told us much about being married to her, but I can only imagine. And she was frigid too?” I wasn’t going to get into this. That would keep me at Mt. Lebanon at least through the weekend.

“But Rona is another matter. I have no idea why she wanted to become involved with someone like you who’s already an old man and never could keep a job.”

“Look Dad, we’ve been over this ground before. Yes, I am a little older and I did early on have difficulties in my career, but I think I managed to do pretty well for myself.”

“Including taking advantage of her.”

“Now that’s a new one. And frankly I have no idea what you’re talking about or where this is coming from. We have a very good . . .”

“I assume you can still get it up,” again territory I was not prepared to get into, “though after what you did to yourself and what those surgeons must have had to do with your prostate, one can’t be sure of that either.”

“Why don’t we agree to talk about something else? Actually,” I flamboyantly checked my watch, “it’s getting near closing and I have to get back to the city.”

“OK, next time you come for a visit we’ll talk about the weather.” This was something he used to say sarcastically decades ago whenever we would get into a disagreement about politics or one of my girlfriends; but by deploying my college-perfected debating skills I would get him all twisted up and lost in his own misuse of logic. Achieving that was among my occasional malicious triumphs.

“That suits me fine.” I began to gather my book bag and jacket and rummaged through them for the car keys.

“But before you go, I have one more word of advice for you—You are in danger of doing to Rona exactly what I did to your mother.” He let a beat go by and then added, “Have a good drive back to the city. I hope you don’t run into too much traffic.”

But he had me. “Go on,” I said.

“I don’t want to keep you. I know you have more important things to do. I’ll see you again in a few months.”

“No, no, no. You can’t just drop that on me and then send me on my way. Not after what you just told me about you and Mom. No, no. Let me have it. Whatever’s on your mind. I’m ready for you.” I folded my jacket and tossed it back on the bench to indicate I wasn’t leaving.

And so he said, “Didn’t I read in one of your things how you boasted about how all you cared about was helping Rona become strong and independent? To overcome the things that had happened to her during her childhood? Or was that one of the things you were making up. How did you put it—‘imagining’?”

“Yes, I think you saw Crazy Rona. That was a few years ago but that one included very little fictionalizing.”

“That’s what I meant to say—‘fictionalizing.’ Very impressive. But I’m not interested in arguing with you about that because if what you wrote about yourself there is true, and I hope it is, than you’re not doing a very good job of it. In fact, because of some of your shenanigans you’re doing the opposite.”

“Once again,” I shot back, “which is par for the course today, I’m not following you. What ‘shenanigans,’ pray tell, are you referring to?” I had had just about enough from him. He was long-gone but there I was seemingly not able to escape from him or his relentless criticism. Indeed, I thought, if he wanted to make comparisons between his life and mine, it would have been more appropriate to see that what he was doing to me then and there was the very same thing he had accused my mother of inflicting on him! Endless streams of criticism.

“She saved your life didn’t she?”

“What? Who?”

“You ignored your health and all the symptoms, which we do not need to get into here. Didn’t you? To a point where you considered committing suicide? You even wrote a note, didn’t you? All sorts of poetic bullshit as if the note was more important than the act of killing yourself and its consequences. What pretentious crap.” How did he know this? “Quite the man you were. Quite the inspiration for her. You proclaimed, even in print, how essential it is to take responsibility for your life, about how important it is to be strong in spite of anything that might have happened to you. To not pass along the blame to others or to situations in which you might have unfairly found yourself. And in that way to become independent and, what, happy? Or as you prefer to put it—to pursue happiness. Do I have that right?”

He did.

“But I can’t believe your hypocrisy. You set her up to believe all this. And in you. And then what did you do? You get her to take all the risks involved in trying to live this way and then you plan to take a self-indulgent dive onto the rocks in the Mediterranean. Beautiful. How romantic. And what would then have happened to her?”

“Well I’m still here, aren’t I?” I couldn’t believe how pathetic I sounded. Even to myself. He had me dead to rights.

“Only because of her. That’s why. She found you rolled up in a ball wallowing in your own puke with the crumpled ‘suicide’ note next to you. You didn’t even have the courage to tear it up and throw it away. You wanted to be sure she saw it. Maybe even save it so it could one day be published after the Great One was gone. What a man!

“She forced you to get up and dragged you to the doctor and then back to New York and to the hospital. She went to every medical test with you. She held your hand so you wouldn’t cry out in pain when they took your blood or stuck a needle in your ass. She slept in your hospital room in a broken-down chair night after night to make sure you saw a familiar face when you woke from your sleep and to make sure the nurses didn’t do anything to make your condition worse.

“And then, after the first operation, when they hooked you up to that bag, who cleaned it out?” I didn’t respond. “I’m asking you, who cleaned up your shit?” He waited for me to say something and, when I didn’t, he bellowed loud enough to awaken Richard Tucker from an operatic reverie, “I’m asking you—Who cleaned up your shit?”

“She did,” I whispered as if to myself. “Rona did. And” I added soundlessly, “other things you’ll never know.”

“I did hear about other things. Maybe not so life-and-death, but still important. From years ago.”

I waited for him to continue but when he didn’t I thought, Maybe the only way to get free of him, and this, would be to try to tell him what had happened. More, to confess to him as he had to me; and, how I hated to acknowledge this, that he was right. I had been that hypocrite. So I turned my back to him and, as if speaking to the wind which was now lashing Mt. Lebanon and me, I took a chance.

“I will tell you a story,” I began in a hush, as if to assure he would not be able to catch more than the intonations. “Just one, but I will attempt to make it true.”

“I’ll let you know how well you do.”

So he was hearing me. In any case, I had resolved to do this and so I continued. “Not too long after we became involved with each other, it became clear that our . . .”

“I thought you said ‘one story’? Now you’re talking about when you met. I don’t have all night to . . .”

“For a change, try to be quiet and be a little patient and let me do this my way. OK?” I took his silence to mean I should proceed. “Well, though I was my usual oblivious self, problems emerged almost immediately. Rona had not as yet developed the self-confidence to confront me or them and so they accumulated and inevitably, like everything that’s ignored, they festered. Things like my at the last minute canceling plans that she had taken the initiative to make for us. Things like my grumbling every time she wanted to have dinner on her own with one of her friends. She was a part of a book club that met once a month; and if she didn’t call in to let me know how things were going and, more important to me, when she would be coming home to me, I would give her attitude—what she called ‘the silent treatment.’ One of the few things that was good about her parents was that they didn’t monitor her behavior—she depended on being unfettered, having that freedom. So what did I do? I pressed in on her, claiming it was because I loved her so much that I wanted to be with her every free moment; while in truth I wanted to rein her in, tie her more closely to me than all the inequalities in our relationship would on their own naturally assure. I used all my subversive guile to make her even more dependent on me, and thereby slowly sapped away some of what she valued most--her freedom.”

Now I needed to take in some air. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I did that while proclaiming I longed for her to fully come into her own. To develop an independent sense of herself. I didn’t at the time understand very much of this but soon Rona began to question me and eventually, aggressively confront me since one of the techniques I employed to control and manipulate her was to act as if she what she was accusing me of was unfair and not based on any specific evidence that she could cite. And worse, if I am attempting to be honest here, and I am, when I needed to be most self-protective, when she was close to breaking through the armor of my defensive logic and I was thus in danger of having her confront me with what I was really up to, in spite of my claims that the opposite was true, I would in response puff myself up and pretend to grow calmer as a cynical strategy to incite her anger and turn it into rage. So as to make her feel as if she was, in her passion and fury, not just in a rage but crazy. Which you can only imagine set off deeply-rooted bells-and-whistles from her childhood.

“I, her closest friend, her advocate, confidant, and trusted lover, I too was calling her, though carefully and perversely brilliantly I did not use the words themselves (and how thus this made my claims more effective!), I also, as I stood there smugly and mockingly smiling down at her as she thrashed about the room, engulfed in tears, like her parents, I too was making her feel like she was indeed Crazy Rona.”

My father continued to remain uncharacteristically silent. If he weren’t in his current condition, I would have worried that something had happened to him. But I had more to say and pressed on. “And this is not all. I am ready to tell you that one story.”

He broke his silence and said sarcastically, “It’s about time.” I could almost see him tapping on his watch as he had done so many times in the past when exasperated with me.

Undeterred and determined to conclude, now casting aside any pretense of getting to my meeting, not even caring if they locked me in for the night, still not facing him, I said, “This is hard for me to say but I did other cruel things. And it took me a long time to understand why I would do this to someone I so genuinely loved, though you may understandably be doubting that what I felt for her in any way resembled love. But as difficult as it is to believe, while I was behaving this way, we also did have a good life. We had friends who enjoyed being with us. We did things that gave us pleasure. We had common interests. We liked being alone with each other. We liked to read and listen to music. Passionately, we passed Hotel du Lac and Crossing to Safety back and forth between us and wore out the Budapest’s recordings of Beethoven’s last quartettes. We took great pleasure in languid Sunday naps and when we trekked in the Tetons became intoxicated by the same landscapes. We enjoyed cooking and baking together and agreed that life is too short not to drink good wine. Especially our favorites, Cos D’Estournel and Leoville Las Cases. At NYU we worked together successfully. And we even enjoyed, if that is the best way to describe it, our spats and arguments, for me as long as they didn’t hit too close to home. We had what you would call a satisfying ‘private life.’ To everyone who knew us we presented the picture of happiness. Many thought we were an ideal couple. Rare these days. And in many ways they were right--We were that couple.

“But there was another side to us. My need to have power, to reach in and influence, possess, and control the very heart of Rona’s being continued unabated. I must have been fearing that if she came fully into her own, became self-assured enough not to let me get away with my manipulations, she would lose respect for my ability to arrange and take care of things, and her. And that she would eventually come to conclude that she didn’t any longer need me. Doesn’t this sound preposterous and pathetic? And where’s the internal logic—did I need to continue to chip away at her self-esteem, reduce her in order to elevate my own essentialness? Was I that fragile and insecure, in spite of my public bluster and seeming ability to understand the most complex situations and take responsibility for getting things right, that I needed to do this to her? That in order to provide for her, take care of her most delicate needs, I felt compelled to behave in ways to cause her to become even weaker, more self-doubting and less confident? This must be so because I persisted in doing just that.

“But here’s the story. It’s not about very dramatic things; but in its mundaneness and seeming innocence, even its overtly beneficial effects for her and us, just below the surface something more malevolent was relentlessly at work.” I felt that my father was straining to follow me as I took this torturous route to get finally to my point.

“I know you must be wondering why Rona remained with me.” I realized I was off again on another tangent but hoped he would see all of the connections I was attempting to make. “It was in part that I was very clever at my manipulations. Very skillful in covering my tracks so that often, especially early on, I could get away with convincing her that what I was doing to her was all for her benefit. But over time Rona began more and more to see through that deception; but still, she remained because of the deep investment she had made in getting me to stop the pretending long enough so that we could clear away enough emotional debris to allow us to talk honestly about what we both, yes both, had allowed to happen. If we could do that, she hoped, perhaps we would be able to recalibrate our relationship. And, complicated as it is to comprehend, we were still very much in love with each other. Rona and I.”

After another pause to gather myself, I said, “Then I took ill. This is not the story, but when Rona took me to the hospital for the first time nothing short of a tectonic shift for us was about to occur.

“It was 5:30 in the morning. The second day after my operation to divert my colon to form a stoma, a colostomy, in the hope that it would allow my intestines and bladder to calm down enough to enable the infection to heal so they could a few months later perform the surgery to finally cure my condition. As had happened the day before at the same early hour, Dr. Weinstein, my surgeon and his team of residents burst through the door, switched on the bank of overhead lights and, slapping his hands together with such force in the now blazing room that it sounded like a thunderclap. Rona, who had again stayed the night with me, curled up as best she could on a hard chair, with that awoke from her restless sleep and leapt to the floor. Without a wasted motion, she thrust herself between him and me, immobilized in my bed where I lay attached to six drains and tubes, as if to protect me from this predawn invasion.

“‘Well,’ Dr. Weinstein said, again clapping his hands as if to show his professional enthusiasm, ‘he’s doing well, but we can’t as yet rule out cancer.’

“Though groggy, Rona snapped back at him, ‘You said the same thing yesterday; and though when I questioned you about the chances you would find cancer you told me they were infinitesimal. But here you are again talking about cancer.’ I was now fully awake in spite of the narcotic power of my epidural.

“‘That’s true,’ Dr. Weinstein said, ‘but still, cancer can’t be ruled out.’

“‘I’m no doctor,’ Rona said, ‘but I know at least two things about this,’ I tried to hoist myself up on my stack of pillows to get a better view of this potentially incendiary confrontation, ‘First,’ she said, ‘if the likelihood that he has cancer is as slight as you claim,’ he nodded, ‘than what are you trying to accomplish by announcing every day that it can’t be ruled out? We know that. But why does it have to be the first thing you say to us? And second’ (he was staring at her incredulously at her as if to say, “No one talks to me this way—I’m a surgeon and you are only a patient but you clearly do not know your place”) and second,’ Rona pressed on unintimidated, ‘is it necessary to storm in on us as you did with all your minions trailing behind you, and, again as you did yesterday, turn on all the lights, clapping your hands like you’re at a boxing match, and by doing so scaring us half to death? Don’t you have any awareness of what this does to someone who is seriously ill and trying to get rested and healed?’ He remained mute. ‘Well I can answer that one for you—it doesn’t help at all. And’ she concluded, wheeling on her heel and striding over to stand beside me, ‘I would appreciate it if when you come to see Lloyd tomorrow, you knock on the door first before entering and I will let you in. And I expect there will be no more talk about cancer until you have something to rule in or, more likely, out.’

She stared across at him through the tangle of I.V. lines. In my weakened condition, though I concurred with everything Rona said and admired her ability to confront him as she had, still I trembled, fearing that as a surgeon he would not take what he would see to be a reprimand from a layperson, and as a result, would fire me as his patient.

But in the blazing fluorescent light I thought I saw on his face the flicker of a sly smile. A form of begrudging respect, I felt, for Rona’s standing up for us, and confronting him as she did. And for her defense of me. A more subdued Dr. Weinstein said, “No more cancer talk because I am sure we have nothing to worry about. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at 8:00 sharp.” He emphasized the later time and shoed his resident acolytes from the room, following them out, being sure to turn off the lights and gently close the door.”

I wasn’t certain if my father was understanding what I was attempting to tell him about Rona and me by recalling this incident with Dr. Weinstein. And so I continued, “Later that night, much later--it was about 1:30 a.m.—I heard Rona stirring in her chair. It was chilly in the room and I thought she was rummaging around looking for another blanket. But she in fact had come over to my bed and was checking the pump that was connected to my epidural line. It was making a strange sound. With a flashlight that she had brought from home I saw her checking the dials on the pump and the bag that contained the pain medication. I heard her say to herself sotto voce, “The damn thing is almost empty. We’re about to run out of painkiller.” With that I awoke in a start and at once began to shake and sweat when I thought about the implications of running out of medicine.

“Without a word Rona disappeared. I assumed to alert the nurse on duty. In about five minutes she returned and told me, now fully awake, that the nurse was attempting to locate the anesthesiologist on night duty since only he was authorized to deal with epidurals. She paced the room watching as the medication level relentlessly dropped, checking the door every few seconds for any sign of the nurse or doctor. For certain, within half an hour the bag would run dry and I would be writhing in agony. Realizing this she raced from the room, I assume back to the nurse’s station. A moment later, out of breath, she returned. ‘They tell me the one anesthesiologist on call is in surgery, dealing with a kid who was brought in severely injured in a car accident.’ In spite of this distressing news Rona remained calm and brought me a cold compress in an attempt to keep me from overheating and hyperventilating from fear.

“But she couldn’t contain her frustration and said, ‘Where’s that fucking nurse? Maybe she’ll be able to give you a shot or something to help with the pain until the doctor shows up. I have no idea in the first place why nurses can’t replace these bags. It has to be a doctor? That makes no sense. It’s more bureaucratic hospital bullshit.’ And as she said this I saw a new thought come to her, ‘You know, remember because this is a private room, when we checked in, the Medical Director came by to give us his card and said, “Call me if you need anything”? Well, this qualifies.’ And with that she was dialing his cell phone number. It was a little past 2:00 in the morning, but remarkably he answered. I heard Rona telling him about the situation. When she hung up she said he told her he would do what he could. And what he could do was just what we needed to happen because in less than five minutes the head nurse was in my room and said if the doctor wasn’t there in ten more minutes she had orders to give me a shot of Demerol which would tide me over.

“I know, Dad, I’m going on forever with this, but I’m almost done. It’s important. The anesthesiologist did show up and connected a new bag and I was pain free and eventually fine. That though is not the point.” He was clearing his throat and I realized I had just a few moments of uninterrupted time remaining. So I raced on. “I’ve been telling you about this not so you would know the details of my operations and hospitalizations. None of that’s important.”

“But you did get better because of them.”

“Yes, of course but my point here is about what Rona did during that awful year when I was so sick. Up to that point all my rhetoric about wanting to see her and help her come ‘fully into her own,’ as I’ve described it too many times, was just that—rhetoric. As I’ve told you, confessed to you, for everything I did to encourage that I did something opposite to keep her depending on my vaunted capacity to make decisions, keep threats at bay, and know the best thing to do in all circumstances. Well, after what she shouldered day after day in the hospital—and there were five hospitalizations and dozens of tests and procedures during that year—how she took charge of my treatment and became such a forceful and effective advocate for my proper and appropriate care and treatment, not only did she do magnificently in that role but there was also a significant spillover effect. Into the rest of our lives.

“When we emerged from the clutches of doctors and hospitals Rona was a very different person. Transformed. And you know,” I paused for emphasis, “so was I.”

“I think it’s almost time for you to go,” my father said. It in fact was almost dark.

“I know. Soon. But I need to tell you that the equation between us had been rebalanced. Rona has been more than transformed. About many things we both realized she was as least as capable as I. In truth about many things, much more capable. She now manages our finances, and they are very complicated. For the first time she, and thus we, have a clear picture of our investments and other assets. I had pretended to run things but in truth had substantially ignored them and they were not in very good shape. Rona is now an equal partner in all our decisions—ranging from plans about future to where to have dinner tonight. And everything in between.”

“So this is the story you wanted to tell me? I thought it was going to be about something else that was malevolent, wasn’t that your word, that you had done to Rona.”

“Give me one more minute please. You might be wondering if somehow I feel reduced. If . . .”

“To tell you the truth, that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

“Well, it’s an important issue. One that I suspect from your own life you might be able to understand.” Here I had been telling him all these damning things about myself and I wasn’t now about to let him get away with any of his tricks, or mockery. So I pressed on, “You spoke about always feeling measured and judged by Mom. How her criticism of you, her expecting you to be perfect was a burden under which you eventually broke.”

“That’s not at all how I put it.”

“OK, if you didn’t break under it, you claimed--and I have my doubts that you’re right about this too—you did say that you brought things down on yourself, didn’t you, that you felt as if Mom was judging you to be a failure. Better?” He remained silent. “Well, the reason I didn’t and don’t feel diminished by Rona’s newly acquired power is because it has had the effect of releasing me from some of her unrealistic expectations. One’s, as I’ve said, I encouraged her to have. I was never as able, as smart, as creative, as decisive as she attributed to me. And which I in my need to dominate her had evoked. We together shaped a culture of expectations and perfection which was an enormous burden to both of us—for her to dampen her desires and aspirations and competencies, for me to pretend to be all knowing and always correct. The same kind of culture of perfection that you claim, unfairly I am certain, Mom devised for you. We are both, as a result, becoming free of this and beginning truly to become happy.”

“So this you’re telling me is the story?”

“Actually, it isn’t. I admit I got lost in what I told you and never got to it.”

“But it must be an important story if you repeatedly told me you were getting to it.”

“Maybe then it isn’t. Or maybe it has to wait for my next visit because I want to get home to Rona.”

“And when will that be?” I sensed annoyance.

“This evening. I had a meeting I now missed, but Rona and I are planning a nice dinner.”

“I’m asking when is the next time you’ll be coming?”

“Oh that. Sorry. Soon. I promise soon.” And I meant it.

“I know you are going but before you do there is one more thing.” This would go on forever I feared. Though after this the notion of forever did not disturb me. Perhaps my confession had rebalanced other relationships as Rona and I had rebalanced ours.

“It’s about my sister. Your Aunt Madeline. You remember her?””How could I not.”

“What she told you about Harry. Her third husband.”

“I remember him.”

“She didn’t tell you the truth.””What?”

“What she told you earlier today at Mt. Hebron. About how she controlled him by constantly disapproving of whatever he did. Especially when he did nice things for her.””I’m not following you.” I indeed wasn’t.

“She didn’t tell you the truth. It was a true love affair. In both directions. I envied them. It reminded me of what your mother and let slip away.”

“So why did she tell me that . . . ?”

“Because she loved you and wants you to be happy. She thought by making up that story she would warn you about what might happen to you and Rona. Obviously she doesn’t know about the things you told me today. The next time you go to see her you should tell her what you just told me.”

“That’s incredible! And I promise that I wlll.” And with the beginning of an unburdened spirit, with a wink I said, “It seems a lot of people in this family make up stories.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” he said.

Which reminded me, “Do you remember, dad, years ago, when I told you that I didn’t want to go to medical school because I felt it wouldn’t make me happy and you said, ‘What does happiness have to do with anything?’ I spent a lot of years thinking about that and what I should say back to you as an answer. One that would be truthful. And now I have one--it has to do with everything.”

I was half way down the path to where I had parked the car when I thought I heard him say back to me—“You were right son. It is everything.” Then he added, “I’m happy here”

And then as I opened the car door, I heard my mother say, “Darling, it’s cold out. You’ll catch a chill. You should have brought along a sweater.”

THE END