OCTOBER 6, 2023 – In December 2015, UB left his fortress for the last time, though no one then new it would be the last. Had he known it was his final exit—and why—he probably wouldn’t have called 9-1-1. He was having an “episode,” as he later characterized it; a diabetic event coupled with a mild heart attack. The people having the bigger “episode” and the more severe “heart attack,” however, were the EMS personnel and officials of the Rutherford Health Department.
As Cliff informed me the next day, the health department wouldn’t allow UB back in the house unless and until it was cleaned up. Without officially condemning 42 Baghdad Street, the borough was no longer turning a blind eye to what had been in plain sight for decades.
The truth was, UB had been such a cantankerous contrarian that a long succession of local authorities had let him rule his kingdom unchallenged. When a newcomer joined the borough staff, council or mayor’s office, ready to clean up, if not condemn, UB’s dominion, I’m sure veterans of prior battles with UB whispered caution. “Don’t get mixed up with Mr. Holman,” I imagined the voice of experience said. “He’ll bite your head off, threaten to sue, and make you wish you hadn’t taken a baseball bat to the hornet’s nest. Want to work the margins here and there? Send a notice about the sidewalk upended by roots of the ancient chestnut tree on Highland Cross or the beeches along Lincoln Avenue—then talk to Cliff. But whatever you do, don’t cross swords with Mr. Holman. You’ll lose.”
Though he pursued a strategy of irascibility, UB also knew that tax dollars talk. On the last day of every single calendar quarter for over 20 years (after Grandpa’s demise), UB had miraculously dug out from his “office of the beautiful mind,” the inflated current year tax statements for the seven parcels of his Rutherford domain, torn off the stubs for the current quarter, located his checkbook and written out the checks, and . . . personally walked stubs and checks across the way to the office of the Rutherford Tax Collector[1]. Over time the aggregate competed with the gobs of cash he was sending to the drug addict living in London. With UB’s tax payments in hand, the borough could afford to look the other way when it came to the garbage house at 42 Baghdad Street, the “haunted house” at next door 50 Baghdad Street, and the adjoining parcels bearing Dickensian warehouses, all constituting a giant eyesore in the middle of “Mayberry,” which called itself, “The Borough of Trees.”
And consequently nothing changed. Until . . . the 9-1-1 call that ended UB’s reign.
By the time I flew East, UB was already in transitional care, this time at a swanky facility in Paramus, just up the pike from Rutherford. Jenny was already in New York, and had already been across the Hudson to check on UB. Upon my arrival she joined me for another trek to New Jersey. Cliff got us inside the house, where we gaped at the increased filth and chaos that ruled the place unforgivingly.
I’d summoned Tom Sullivan to meet us there to confer about matters. Tom was always cordial and reliably calm and cool, never allowing himself disturbing reactions. The circumstances he now confronted, however, shocked him into an exception.
“Wow!” he said, upon laying eyes on what was once an inviting hallway leading from the front entrance of the formally elegant residence. “Your descriptions were inadequate, Eric. I wasn’t ready for this!” Jenny and I laughed.
“Stay a while, Tom,” I said, “and you’ll get used to it. We have.” Tom laughed. “Actually, Tom, we haven’t gotten used to it, which is why we retained you.”
“This is overwhelming,” he said, shaking his head in continued disbelief.
Jenny and I spent the next few hours combing through UB’s accumulated trash, trying in the process to find information about his health insurance and financial status. We kept ourselves amused by all the manifestations of UB’s OCD behaviors. The most readily identifiable objects were clocks and thermometers, which seemed to have multiplied since my previous visit, but what overwhelmed us was the sheer volume of trash-hoarding throughout the house. Most notable, however, were the countless gay porn tapes, or at least apparent gay porn videos. We had no inclination, let alone compulsion, to watch any. UB’s porn-OCD was inescapably evident: “Exhibit XXX” was the same version of the spiral notebook I’d discovered years before; the notebook filled with accounting paper on which he’d logged frame by frame his obsession with the portrayal of sexual acts between gay men.
For a few seconds I pondered what a psychologist would do with the contrast between UB’s written sexual profanities and the total absence of profanity and even crass language in his speech. Or perhaps more germane, the link between (a) the social pressure to suppress for so many decades his sexual orientation; and (b) his general obsessive compulsive disorder. The porn notebook was repulsive, but it also made me feel sorry for him for the indelible mark his psyche bore—a mark etched, no doubt, by his life-long suppression of identity.
When Jenny returned to Manhattan, Cliff drove me to CareOne in Paramus. I found UB fully restored from whatever medical exigencies had landed him in the hospital. If he was rolling around in a wheelchair, it wasn’t because he needed one. For him it was a chance to go for apparent joyrides down the long hallways.
“Hi, Uncle Bruce,” I said upon intercepting him.
“We’re getting our daily exercise without worries about snow or ice,” he said.
“I can see that. So how are they treating you in your splendid new quarters?”
“Treating us? Okay, I guess,” he said, as we reached the doorway of the reading room along our route. “In there we can read the newspapers. We don’t read all of them. There’s a lot of news we don’t need to know, but we get to decide what we read and what we don’t read.”
“What do you think of the Republican line-up?” I asked to make conversation.
“We’re for Trump!” he said with inordinate volume. I cringed in embarrassment by what staff and residents within earshot would think.
“Trump? Really?”
“He’s a businessman, and what we need is a businessman running the country.”
Hoping for the quick dissipation of his comment, I decided to leave it suspended four feet off the floor of the hallway. “How’s the food?” I said, trying a different subject.
“It’s okay, I guess. The Salisbury steak is a little tough, but we’re getting enough calories, I suppose.”
“Can I see your room?”
“Why would you want to see that?”
“I’m just curious.”
“It looks like all the other rooms.”
“Maybe but I haven’t seen any of the other rooms, and the one I’d have easiest access to is your room.”
“It’s a long way from here. It’s all the way down this hall, then down the one to the left, then we have to turn again down another hall, and it’s at the end of that hall.”
“Fine. Let’s roll.”
We did. As we rounded the staff station at the left-hand turn, the woman in charge of the desk stood up, eyed UB rolling by and me trailing right behind. At me she mouthed the words, “I need to talk with you.”
I gestured “OK” with my hand and a twist of my mouth, leaving her to infer I’d stop on my return from UB’s room.
Except for the unmade bed, UB’s temporary quarters looked surprisingly neat, but then I realized there was nothing in the room except the bed, a small dresser and a chair on which someone had laid UB’s overnight bag—marked, “Patient Belongings” from the hospital—with a few of its haphazard contents spilling out of the top. The window blinds were open, allowing in the diminishing daylight. The grounds outside looked well kempt.
“Nice room,” I said.
“We hate it,” said UB. “but we won’t be here long.”
“Where will you be going?”
“Back to my own house,” he said. His switch to the singular pronoun underscored his proprietary treatment of 42 Lincoln, a reminder of my ongoing failure to wrest free Mother’s inheritance.
“I don’t think you’re going back there anytime soon,” I said, deciding to grapple with the elephant.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the borough says you can’t move back unless and until the house is cleaned up.”
“They have no right to decide what’s clean and what’s not. Suppose we don’t want to clean it up? They can’t force it. We’ll sue them if they do.”
“Mmmm. You might want to think twice about that. In the first place, your house is in a terrible condition, Uncle Bruce. I was inside it earlier today, and it’s unlivable. Second, the borough does have the authority to prevent you from re-occupying it until it’s cleaned up.”
“You have no right to tell me what’s clean and what’s not. We’ve lived in that house for longer than you or any of those borough officials has been alive. As soon as we get out of here we’re going back.”
I saw no reason to put a match to his potentially volatile kindling. I worried that what the staff person had said in mouthing the words, “I need to talk with you,” was already a sign UB was at risk of expulsion from what appeared to be a safe, clean, secure, well-managed facility. What on earth would we do if he were persona non gratis here?
UB rolled ahead, oblivious to my holding back to confer with the staff person. She escorted me to a nearby unoccupied meeting room and closed the door behind us as she introduced herself.
“Is he your father?” she asked.
“Oh-h-h no, I assure you, Susan [not her real name], he’s not. He’s my uncle. I’m Eric, by the way, just dropping in for a quick visit. I’m from Minnesota.”
“Minnesota? Good to meet you, Eric. Let me say that your uncle has been quite a lot of trouble. He’s constantly ordering the staff around and interfering with the other residents. I don’t know what we—or you—can do about his behavior.”
Susan had just fired off a blistering fast ball. I could see it coming, but I didn’t dare swing at it.
“I hear you,” I said. “The family’s trying to figure out what’s next. Personally, I’m hoping we can move him into assisted living here at CareOne.”
“You’ll need to talk with them.”
“Yeah, before word gets out, if you know what I mean.”
“My lips are sealed—until they’re not,” she said with a smile. “You’ve got your hands full with your uncle, I can see that.”
I wanted to say, ‘Oh, you ain’t seen nothin’’ but bit my tongue instead.
I thanked Susan for her concern and rushed down the hall to catch up to UB, who by this time was in the reading room, poring over The Wall Street Journal.
“Nice facility here,” I said, breaking his concentration.
“It’s as good as the library,” he said. “We go down there almost every day to stay on top of the news.
Cliff had dropped me off so he could run errands. I summoned him back by a furtive text. He reappeared 15 minutes later. It was none too soon.
“Ooo,” I said to UB, upon receipt of Cliff’s text informing me of his arrival. “My ride’s here. Gotta go. I’ll see you. Take care of yourself.” I didn’t wait for an answer, but as I peered over my shoulder I could see none was forthcoming. He was fully absorbed in the news.
Upon climbing into Cliff’s Denali, he asked me for an account of the visit.
“The world according to Bruce,” I said, “and you can’t make this stuff up.”
Cliff laughed. “That bad, huh?”
“The usual nonsense, but at least he wasn’t chucking furniture around and wasn’t actively trying to escape. But I’m just telling you, he made it clear he’s not staying there. He wants to return to the house.”
“You know, Eric, in all seriousness, I don’t think he’s ever going back to 42 Baghdad Street.”
I described my encounter with Susan the staff person and my concerns about the danger of UB’s eviction.
“I have a plan,” said Cliff.
“What’s that?”
“We lobby the director.”
“Who’s the director?”
“Judy [not her real name. We met when UB first landed there. I explained some of the background and got her to laugh about it and reassured her that if need be we could get Uncle Bruce to cooperate.”
“We can?”
“The important thing is that I convinced her we can.”
“I suppose, Cliff, but this just in: I live in Minnesota and this is happening in New Jersey, which means enforcement is going to be up to you. Remember when he was having a temper tantrum at the other place and you called me? You were as helpless as I was useless.”
“Yeah, but he’s been knocked down a few pegs since then. Plus, we’re working with the big game changer—the borough health department saying he can’t move back into the house. We both know that thanks to the borough’s restriction, he’s now in a corner. And he’s getting no help from us to clean up his pig sty. If we don’t clean it up, who’s going to help him, Angelo? He’s too chicken. And is UB going to get anyone else to clean up his mess? Hell no. The ol’ Road Runner is out of ‘Beep-beeps.’”
Cliff was right. UB had two choices: move into CareOne assisted living (adjoining the transitional care section) or roll himself out into the parking lot—assuming they’d allow him to borrow the wheelchair. Otherwise he could walk out into the December cold, call a cab or Angelo and go . . . where? If he tried to defy the borough’s edict, he’d have to keep all the lights turned off after dark. Otherwise, given the proximity of the borough hall to 42 Baghdad Street and the corresponding sight lines, within minutes the authorities would be darkening his back doorway to forcibly remove him.
Checkmate. Except . . .
. . . Not quite. We needed a $7,500 check for a deposit. That was problematic, because UB still controlled his checkbook, and Cliff and I knew full well how difficult it would be to get UB to write a $7,500 check—without “Alexander Nikolic” as the payee. Plus, first things first, UB had to be accepted into assisted living.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] UB the cheapskate left the assessments unchallenged. I suspect he knew the trade-off: if he appealed, he’d have to grant the assessor access to “the world according to Bruce.” Plus, a full-throated tax appeal would undermine the “tax money talks” part of his strategy to keep the borough at bay on all fronts.
