SEPTEMBER 1, 2023 – Whenever I seek and am denied permission, I remember that forgiveness is more easily obtained. Cliff and I didn’t exactly ask for the hospital staff for permission to confront UB with the “contract,” but in effect permission is what we sought when the nurse at the desk answered our question with a question.
“Excuse me,” I’d said to the unsmiling nurse, “but is there a small conference room we could use to discuss some things with my uncle, Bruce Holman?”
“What sort of things do you need to discuss with him?” asked the equally humorless woman standing next to the nurse. “Hi, I’m [Sarah Uptight[1]], and I’m the social worker assigned to this unit.”
I wasn’t happy with her question, but I naively attempted to address it truthfully. “Well, it’s of a personal nature.”
“Will it be upsetting? We have to be careful with cardiac patients, you know.”
Having a better nose for trouble than I, Cliff jumped in. “Can we have a word with you in private?” he asked the social worker. She obliged and led us into an unoccupied visitors lounge. Cliff and I sat down on a sofa and the social worker pulled up a chair to hear us . . . ask for permission. We volunteered way too much information—enough that the social worker saw fit to call the cardiologist, who “ordered” us not to deliver any news that would “upset the patient.” Mission failed.
The next morning I boarded a plane for Minnesota, and as I headed westward I contemplated my next trip eastward. I would first confer with my sisters, then investigate options. Options for staunching the flow of funds to the “Serbian fucker,” for ensuring that UB would keep his nose clean and decent. With Cliff as the principal combat commander, we would figure out how finally to rein in UB’s self-destructive behavior. It would start with another stab at delivering the “contract.”
* * *
A week later, I boarded a plane again bound for Newark, New Jersey. Cliff picked me up, and en route to “42 Baghdad Street” he gave me an update on UB. UB had been doing very well and was scheduled for release from the “halfway house” of medical care—a nursing home, which served as a transition facility between the cardiac unit of Passaic General and “42 Baghdad Street.”
“One thing I gotta say about Uncle Bruce,” said Cliff, as he threaded the needle of his large van through heavy traffic going at the speed of light. “And that is, he sure bounces back fast. The guy is all ready to go back to his seniors exercise class and who knows what else. But one thing is for sure,” he laughed, “and that is that he won’t be going back to his porn flicks, because we’ve got ‘em all locked up in the trunk of horrors!
“So, anyway . . . hold on . . .” said Cliff, as he answered his cell phone. “Sure, Jerry. Tell him I want a thousand balloons for that event. I want ‘em coming down over the entire floor, not just the stage . . . What’s that? . . . Yeah, yeah, of course . . . yeah, because I told him he’d be getting his money’s worth . . . okay . . . ‘bye.”
“So, here’s the plan,” Cliff said to me as he tailgated the vehicle ahead of us. “I’ll drop you off at 42 Baghdad Street and then I’ll go get Uncle Bruce at the home. That will give you a little more time to go through stuff in the office and see if you can find more tapes.”
“More tapes?” I said.
“Yeah, cassette tapes. Remember those cassette tapes that you found in the drawer in the file cabinet?”
“Yeah, there were a few in there, I remember.” In fact, on my previous trip I had found several cassette tapes rattling around inside a drawer of an ancient file cabinet. I hadn’t assigned any significance to them.
“Well, we should see if there’s more of them,” said Cliff.
“Why?”
“Because . . . you ready for this? . . . they’re recordings of phone conversations between Alex and Uncle Bruce.”
“Huh?”
“That’s right. Uncle Bruce actually recorded his telephone conversations with the Serbian fucker!”
In the hour or so that I had before Cliff returned with UB, I re-entered the office, where I had confronted such distressing chaos little more than a week before. I opened the file cabinet drawer where I had found the tapes, pulled them out, and then began a search for more. Cliff’s instincts had been right. Soon I’d collected more than a dozen cassettes. The eventual number would run into scores. Each cassette bore a label with a range of dates. Despite the immense clutter of the room, an old cassette player sat in the open next to the phone. I slipped a tape into the machine and hit the rewind button. A minute later, I pressed “play.”
“October five, two thousand four, two o’clock New York time,” UB’s words rose from the cheap little speaker. It was a depressed, robotic, monotone voice. In curious anticipation, I sat perfectly still, waiting for what would unfold.
First a couple of European phone rings—then the listless voice of the “Serbian fucker.” “Hallo.”
“How are we doing?” UB announced himself. Gone was the depressed monotone, and alive and robust was the voice of an infatuated man addressing the object of his infatuation.
“Not tho good, George,” said Alex.
“What’s the matter? Are we getting enough sleep? Are we eating the right things?” I wondered just when and how both Mother and UB had acquired the habit of using the royal “we.”
“I have no money. I had to pay my rent thith week, and I have no money for food.”
“You need to eat something!”
“I can’t George. You underthtand me, George? I have no money. I can’t buy any food.”
“How much money do you need?”
“I don’t know, George. I need money for food, and they’re going to thut off my thell phone nextht if I don’t pay my bill.”
“They can’t just do that,” said UB authoritatively. “How much money do you need?”
“I need a thouthand pounds, George,”
“A thousand pounds?!”
“Yeth, George, a thouthand pounds.”
“Okay, let me see if I can get that to you later this afternoon,” said Uncle Bruce.
“I need it right now, George. I can’t wait.” I wondered what the Serbian fucker would have done had UB not called him. Had he planned to call UB? Or was the Serb just seizing on the opportunity of the moment—the call from his lonely, infatuated, American sugar daddy? I was flabbergasted by this raw, sorry evidence of a ne’er do well taking gross advantage of an elderly person who just happened to be my uncle, however flawed and despicable he had become in my eyes.
I hit the forward button, then “play,” and listened to excerpts from other tapes. The pattern was the same—the monotone voice announcing time and date, followed by a conversation that always, but always, revolved around the Serb’s immediate financial need and the pressing logistics of effectuating a wire transfer to address the need. I could envision the taped conversation that attended each of the wire confirmations in the folder I had discovered on my previous trip to Rutherford.
But why would he go to the trouble of taping each of these conversations? What in the world was going through UB’s mind?
Before I knew it, my cell phone went off. It was Cliff. “I’ve got Uncle Bruce in the van, so we’re about 15 minutes away.”
“Okay,” I’ll meet you out in the driveway,” I said. Minutes later, there I stood, brief case and travel bag beside me. I did not know how my return would be received. According to plan, Cliff had made no mention of my return, and I wondered how UB would react to my presence now that he had to know that I knew everything. He knew that on my previous trip, Cliff and I had had free access to the house—and all the horrors that were in it. In a normal human being, wouldn’t that knowledge prompt embarrassment of the first order? Would he not want to avoid me with the same intensity that fueled his addiction to gay porn, his addiction to the Serbian and other manifestations of bizarre obsessive-compulsive behavior—the traits that had transformed 42 Lincoln Avenue into “42 Baghdad Street”? Would the knowledge that his only nephew was privy to “unmentionables” not reduce UB to the most abject level of shame and embarrassment? Might that shame and embarrassment cause him to shut me out of his life? But then I realized that I wasn’t thinking straight. A person whose mind was so twisted in the first place would doubtless have a twisted sense of how others would react.
Soon Cliff’s van pulled into the driveway, and I watched as UB got himself out. He looked as spry as ever and surprised, of course, to see me. A huge smile lit up his face, and then came a truly remarkable event: for the first time in my entire life, UB gave me an enormous hug. For a moment I wondered—was he expressing tremendous relief, relief that despite having been “discovered,” he had not been rejected but just the opposite, he had seen more attention in the past week than over the last 10 years and he had not been rejected? I hugged him in return and said warmly, “Good to see you again Uncle Bruce. You’re looking great!” I meant it.
For the first time since his surgery almost three weeks before, UB entered his house and wandered about to inspect the sweeping changes that Cliff and I had orchestrated by way of the Merry Maids’ massive cleanup. Cliff and I followed him, waiting expectantly for his reaction, but there was almost none at all. He walked from room to room as if he were simply trying to get from one point to another. Cliff suggested lunch, so off we went.
Still, there was no mention of the transformation within UB’s house and with it, the conspicuous absence of all the porno tapes and notebooks containing critiques of the those horrific tapes. Instead, UB launched into a highly energized monologue about current political events and delivered a blistering diatribe against the policies of President Bush. He even told us he’d voted Democratic numerous times in previous elections, and upon hearing this I wondered what in the world Grandpa would have thought. UB went on to a range of other subjects, including those covered by a raft of books he’d read recently, the automobiles that he had owned over his lifetime and what he liked and disliked about them, and finally, about the numberless ski trips that he had taken in his day. None of it was the least bit boring, and to myself I marveled how incredibly alert and brilliant and charming this 83-year old uncle of mine could be. And to boot, he insisted on picking up the tab—something Cliff later told me hadn’t occurred “in the 20 years I’ve known Uncle Bruce.”
Following lunch, we returned to the house and cleared space in the dining room to accommodate a hospital bed, which had been delivered earlier in the day. Cliff and I also set up an easy chair next to the bed. We put fresh, new sheets on the bed and spruced things up so UB would have a comfortable place to rest and sleep while he convalesced. UB seemed to be pleased with the setup, and at around 2:30, we left him to his own devices and went to Cliff’s office, where Cliff attended to his frenetic business and I reviewed my email and voicemail.
When I returned to the house to check on UB, I found him in mild distress. He was short of breath and wanted me to call his doctor. I wound up talking to someone at the clinic, who instructed me to bring UB in right away for examination.
Matters declined rapidly. UB’s regular doctor wasn’t on hand, so UB was ushered into the immediate care of a Dr. Kim. Dr. Kim knew UB, and I was relieved to see that the two had a good, existing rapport. After some preliminary examination, Dr. Kim’s demeanor changed. “This could be serious,” he said under his breath before calling out orders to an assistant. “We need to have an EKG done right away.”
We were escorted immediately to the EKG room, where a nurse assisted UB in preparing for the exam. The room was much warmer than the rest of the clinic. I looked on rather helplessly, as UB removed his shirt and T-shirt, revealing a rather large measure of old age flab. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him without covering, and it was not a pretty sight, though I told myself that if you’re lucky, you get to be his age, and if you get to be his age, you are pretty much going to look like this, which isn’t very pretty.
Just then the doctor pulled me aside, just outside the room. “Your uncle could have a blood clot. He could be in a lot of danger.” Those words obliterated instantaneously—as I contemplated the possible imminence of UB’s demise—all the gay porn, all the money to Alex, all the trash in the house UB had managed to destroy. What if UB really faced mortal danger? What if he died here and now? It hit me: I would be truly sad and upset over his death, and I realized just what an impact he had had on my life, however screwed up I thought his life had become.
The doctor led me back into the EKG room, and for the first time, I noticed that on the opposite wall hung . . . an enormous, outdoor thermometer. I can’t wait to tell Cliff, I thought. How appropriate that in the very room where UB’s life seemed to be in the balance, there would be a K-Mart style thermometer of exactly the sort for which UB himself had developed such a fetish, and which adorned a number of walls (often within a single room) of 42 Baghdad Street. It seemed to be a talisman especially arranged for the thermometer man himself. I knew then that he would survive. He seemed to be taking everything in stride and weathered the battery of tests without complaint or concern.
Nevertheless, he was destined for a hospital stay again, to have fluid drawn off his heart, so once the doctor made arrangements[2], I took UB back home so he could pack his things, and off we went for his return to the cardiac ward at Passaic General.
After he was settled in, UB launched into a broad-ranging, totally rational and downright interesting monologue about a host of subjects from his college days to his army life to the latest books he’d read (history, all of them), noting that before his heart surgery he’d visited Barnes & Noble every evening and used it like a library (being too cheap, I thought, to buy anything). It all sounded so sane and pleasant and interesting, engaging, entertaining and charming. He was in his prime and as charming as ever. I wondered what went on in that brain of his, and how its chemistry led to charm and brilliance and also total darkness and insanity. In any event, presentment of the contract over which Cliff and I had labored so hard would be delayed indefinitely. It seemed wholly incongruous with UB’s monologue.
I left the hospital quite late, called Cliff to give him an update, then drove back to Rutherford. I ate at a Chinese restaurant in town, and then, instead of traipsing all the way into Manhattan to stay at Jenny and Garrison’s apartment, decided to spend the night in the house—inside 42 Baghdad Street. I slept on the rented hospital bed—why not? The sheets, the pillow and pillow cases were all fresh out of the package. But it made for a fitful sleep. It was just plain weird sleeping there on a rented hospital bed facing the large window of the dining room of the grand old house that had fallen into such a sorry state.
The next morning when I described the experience to Cliff, he laughed—quite predictably. “Yeah, that would be pretty damn strange,” he said, “sleeping there all alone in that haunted house, knowing that it wasn’t always haunted—that it was once a very incredible house, but that your very bizarre Uncle Bruce had turned it into a stinking garbage house full of incredibly weird shit, including gay porn. How could you possibly sleep there overnight?!”
“Wait a sec,” I said. “Is the master of horror actually a big fat chicken? Buy me dinner tonight and I won’t tell anyone.”
“Buy you dinner? After all the dinners I’ve bought UB over the years? No, you buy me dinner and I won’t tell anyone that being cheap runs in your family.”
“Ouch,” I said before joining Cliff in laughter.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Not her real name.
[2] After Dr. Kim had done so, he relaxed a bit, and while a nurse was helping UB out of the EKG room, I engaged Kim in conversation and learned that he had plans that to leave that very evening for a weeklong ski vacation in Colorado. I told him in jest that his patient, my uncle, was “the man who had invented skiing.” For the first time in the course of the appointment, Dr. Kim managed a smile and a chuckle—as did UB.
