SEPTEMBER 10, 2023 – My mission on that trip to New Jersey was a failure except to the extent I now knew that probate cases had been opened—though nothing had progressed beyond the most preliminary steps. UB was released from the hospital the next day, thus ending my free access to his “record storage system” camouflaged in chaos. After bringing UB back to 42 Baghdad Street, Cliff took me out to dinner so the two of us could discuss the next installment of the marathon Road Runner cartoon we’d been living for years. I paid, and the contrast with UB’s stinginess wasn’t lost on Cliff, who, with his usual grace and humor rewarded me with genuine thanks and laughter.
We then drove back to 42 Lincoln. The idea was that under the guise of an impromptu visit in conjunction with a last-minute work-related trip to New York, I would make an appeal to UB to discharge his duties as executor of Gaga and Grandpa’s estates and trustee of their trusts and distribute Mother’s inheritance to her—not to himself or . . . to Alex.
The sun had disappeared by the time we approached, and the house itself was dark except for a light in the “viewing room.”
“You don’t suppose,” said Cliff, “that he’s already back to his old habits.”
“Good god, Cliff. You’re scarin’ me. Drive around the block. I gotta get my courage up.”
He laughed and drove around the corner and down Park Avenue. When we re-approached the house, he said, “Okay, you ready now?”
“No! Another trip around the block.”
“You’re killin’ me!” Cliff laughed.
“No, you’re killin’ me!” I shouted.
“Hey, the last bus to New York leaves in a couple of hours. It’s now past 9:00. Three’s the charm. We’re going around the block one more time, and then you get to go in there, stop the porn and start the talk. Don’t worry. I’ll wait in the drive until you’re in. A key is where it used to be before he removed it to keep me out. He doesn’t know it, but I put an extra one back under the can on the window ledge. Plus, I have a back-up key, which I always carry.
“But wait a sec . . .” said Cliff, as he drew the vehicle to a stop.
“Huh?”
“It’s dark out and you don’t want to give ’im a heart attack by breaking and entering. He’s now inside 42 Baghdad Street, remember, not the cardiac ward of the hospital. I’ll call him, not to ask his permission but to inform him that you just happened to land here for a brief visit to see how he’s doing.”
It all worked. When I entered the “viewing room,” UB wasn’t the least bit surprised by my nighttime appearance. He was probably relieved that he’d had sufficient warning to shut off the porn show. Over the phone Cliff had told him the manufactured story behind my visit and that with “Cliff’s key,” Cliff would let me in. For being the world’s biggest skeptic and contrarian, UB could accept what Cliff told him with surprising alacrity.
“Hi, Uncle Bruce!” I said, summoning warmth and affection.
“Hello,” was his perfunctory response.
“Good to see you’re out of the hospital. Everything back to snuff?”
As I’d expected—and desired for greasing the skids—UB gave me a full discourse on the medical processes and analyses that he’d experienced during his confinement. During the ensuing monologue on the arcana of pharmacology and medical procedures, I pondered what Gaga had once told me—that UB had always wanted to be a physician. That would explain the Dr. Jekyll side of his personality, I thought.
UB trained as a medic in the army during World War II[1], and as he’d described to me several times, one of his most memorable experiences was being the sole medic aboard a crowded overnight troop train between Georgia, where he was based for most of his army career, and New Orleans. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep on that trip,” he’d told me, “as I raced up and down the train all night dealing with one medical situation after another.”
While UB continued describing in detail his hospital stay, I reflected further on what he’d told me over time about his broader army experience. While much of the world was immersed in abject pain and suffering; while most Americans in uniform were in harm’s way overseas or in some sort of logistical chain supporting those in actual combat, UB was living the life of Riley at Fort Benning, Georgia. Next to his overnight work as the medic on the troop train, his most critical role was as keeper of the commandant’s pet bull dog when the commandant had to pack off to the (new) Pentagon for three weeks. As dog keeper, UB was “ordered” to stay at the commandant’s house, which, “in quality,” UB had said, “was several steps up from our barracks.”
“Well,” I said, when an opening occurred in UB’s present medical discourse. “Good to see you’re back in the saddle.”
“Mmm hh,” he grunted. I could sense his elevated anxiety now that he’d run out of deflective material. He was perceptive—and paranoid—enough to figure that I would raise the unsettling subject of his “contract” compliance. What he did not anticipate, however, was the matter that I started with: Mother’s inheritance.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, retreating immediately to his mental fortress and barring the gate.
“But we have to talk about it,” I said. “And you have to deal with it.”
“Did your mother put you up to this?”
“No, as a matter of fact, she did not. She rarely mentions her inheritance and only as a matter of notional curiosity, as in, ‘I wonder, is anything out there mine?’ before moving on to some unrelated subject.
“No, Uncle Bruce, you can blame—or credit—me and me alone for raising what is a difficult topic for you but a very real problem for me. I’m sure you’re going to live to be 100, but guess what. I’m not getting any younger, and I don’t want to be dealing with all this property, all your stuff and trying to figure out how to care for you and how to afford Mother’s care in the years ahead of me.
“You don’t have to worry about any of that. I can take care of myself and I have plenty of money. And your mother owns two houses. She could sell one or both.”
“Really? That’s your response? Mother can sell Björnholm which, for crying out loud is part of Dad’s inheritance and neither he nor my sisters and I, not to mention the next generation, could ever contemplate that property leaving the family? And you’d expect them to sell their house in Anoka before you’d give her what’s her fair share of her inheritance?
“And you say you can take care of yourself? Before Cliff and I intervened, Uncle Bruce, your house was a garbage house. Sorry, but it was. For whatever reason, you were flat out incapable of taking care of things. And look at you now. Look at your house now. After we had it completely cleaned up it’s a train wreck again. Did Cliff tell you that he’s had trouble finding a cleaning crew that will return after just one day on the job?”
“It’s only how you look at it.”
“Say what you want, but from any objective perspective you are immersed in pornography and living in a garbage house.”
I was surprised by my own words and wished that Cliff could’ve witnessed my gumption.
“Get out!” Uncle Bruce said from the edge of the cot. He didn’t stand up, but fury was in his eyes. Crazed fury.
Without warning a wave of fear crested over me. What if in response to my laying down the law, UB should bite back like a rabid dog, shutting down any further effort by anyone to wrench even limited control from his twisted grip? What if in addition to pushing me out of his life he were to retaliate further and sever all ties with Mother herself, my sisters, Cliff? Then where would we be? What if he pushed everything into the abyss of horror and gave everything to Alex? What kind of litigation would we have to pursue to unwind that catastrophe?
As my fear mounted, I realized how vulnerable we were. Nowhere within my paper excavations had I found a will—his will or trust. If he had such instruments in enforceable form—say in his safe deposit at the bank (for which I’d found an annual statement among his “office” papers)—what did they provide? And irrespective of what they might say today, if he were angry enough with my interference, he could change them to the family’s detriment.
But mixed with my fear was an emotion I could never fully suppress when dealing with UB; no more than Cliff could: compassion; compassion for this complicated, disordered human being.
In the next instant, I backed off from confrontation and gave compassion command of my tongue.
“Uncle Bruce, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I’d been standing the whole time and whether for physical reasons or psychological, he remained seated on the edge of the cot. I dropped to my kneels and sat back on my heels. With hands on my thighs I leaned forward slightly to look directly into his eyes. “I’m really sorry.” I meant it, and in both my fear and compassion I wanted him to know I meant it.
“I’m not here because Mother sent me. I’m not here because anyone else sent me. I’m here because I care about you and I care about Mother and I care about everyone in the family. And I care about doing what’s right, that’s all. I’m not here to kick you out of your house or to take stuff away from you what’s yours, not at all; not ever. I love you, Uncle Bruce. I love you for who you are and all that you’ve done for me; for my sisters, for Mother. I’m here because you gave me one of the greatest gifts that anyone has given me—curiosity about the world, a desire to travel and the gift of downhill skiing—and a close runner up, the decisive, definitive advice to choose Bowdoin over all other schools, including your own alma mater. Do you hear me, Uncle Bruce? You’ve had a major positive influence on my life. That’s why I’m here.”
For my entire impromptu soliloquy I’d read his eyes and his countenance. The latter, I noticed, possessed the rigor and prospects of someone 20 years his junior, despite his recent medical setbacks. If one of my sisters had recently observed—coldly but truthfully—“Everything would be simpler if he just died,” I realized that was an improbable occurrence in the short or even intermediate term.
I had his full attention and knew he understood every word. Yet his reaction was inscrutable . . . until he lowered his head into his hands with his elbows dug into his thighs. It was a pose I’d never seen him assume. For a moment I worried that I’d triggered emotions that ought not have been disturbed.
I resumed my appeal. “And Uncle Bruce,” I said, gently grasping his wrist. I had had no intention of delving into what I was about to broach, but I proceeded anyway. “I’m here to apologize too. All of us have been too busy, too distracted, too off in our own little worlds to understand you, I mean, really understand you all these years. I know you’re gay, and you know what? That’s perfectly all right. It’s all right with me, with Cliff, with my sisters, and with Mother—I’m sure—if she knew, and you have nothing, you hear me?—nothing to worry about as to what any of us might think or not think about you being gay. It’s strictly irrelevant as far as any of us is concerned. But what is entirely relevant is how you’ve had to hide this from us, from Gaga and Grandpa, from the whole goddamned world, for crying out loud, just about your entire life. For that fact, we—Nina, Elsa, Jenny, Cliff and I are truly sorry. I don’t know how individually or together we could possibly compensate for the emotional cost of the mores imposed on you because you were born when you were. You hear me? I’m sorry. Really sorry.”
I wanted to push the matter even further and address his obsession with porn as part of the larger complex of his obsessive compulsive disorder. And of course, I wanted to tackle the Alex problem. Yet there was something even deeper: UB’s relationship with Grandpa.
* * *
To my sisters and me, Grandpa was the paragon of even temperament; the man who never ever lost his cool, never uttered a mean word; the boss who was worshipped by his employees. Yet, he was perpetually distant, and as I’d come to see after working in his old-age shadow, he exerted total control over his business domain, even when his grip was clearly not up to the task.
UB was from such a different mold, and yet, for reasons beyond full human understanding, he never freed himself from the shackles of the business controlled by Grandpa. After the war, UB had obtained an MBA and returned to Rutherford, presumably as Grandpa’s sole business heir[2]. But into his early 90s Grandpa never relinquished control or responsibility. UB was relegated to the tag-a-long enterprise of rug-cleaning and storage. He worked diligently at it, but never did he have any hope for advancement, despite his education and brilliance in matters of finance. Instead, he pursued other interests: travel, long ski-weekends in Vermont, reading voraciously and intense horticultural projects.
Perhaps Grandpa discerned that however smart UB was, he had neither the skill nor disposition to manage and direct a large enterprise. He certainly wasn’t a workaholic. But I suspect there was a more foundational reason: Grandpa and UB, father and son, were simply oil and water.
* * *
Given UB’s observable chronic mental disorders, I’d taken things as far as I should. I stood up.
“Send me a proposal,” he said, murmuring the words without lifting his face.
“Will do. I think I should be going now. Are you okay?”
He answered with silence.
“Uncle Bruce, are you going to be okay? I need to catch a bus back to the city. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” he said. He wasn’t convincing, but I pretended he was. I desperately needed some fresh air.
“Alright. I’ll be in touch. I love you Uncle Bruce. We all love you. Take care now, okay?”
With that I exited the room, fled the house and from the drive, called Cliff.
“You’d better check on him first thing in the morning,” I said, before summarizing the encounter. I then walked briskly down Park Avenue to the bus stop, trying in vain to outpace my thoughts.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[2] I learned from Dad that after he and Mother were married (1946), Grandpa had offered him a job. His two principal qualifications: he had graduated from the university with a degree in business administration, and he was sane, smart, competent and capable. Dad told me that he thought it would be a “terrible mistake” to go to work for the family business . . . and gave no further explanation.
