SEPTEMBER 19, 2023 – Three weeks later Cliff called. After I exchanged his “What’s happenin’?” with my, “The usual,” he gave me an update on UB. Looming over our conversation but unspoken was the question, As between us and UB, who would outlast whom? But more immediate circumstances had prompted Cliff’s call.
“Eric, just when I think it’s as weird as it can get, it gets weirder. Just when I think I’ve seen it all with Uncle Bruce, I see something I haven’t seen before.
“The latest involves the cat. Eric, it’s an 18-year old, blind cat, and Uncle Bruce is trying to keep it alive, even though it should have been dead five years ago. It’s awful. Over the last month I’ve taken Uncle Bruce and the cat to the vet about five times. First it was kidney failure, then it was heart failure, then it really did die, but not quite, because Uncle Bruce just couldn’t let go of it, so the vet brought it back to life.
“And of course, that latest crisis happened when I was in the middle of absolute chaos trying to prepare for the Hoboken Italian Festival. I was pulling together all this shit—Eric, I had a full orchestra, floats, props, all kinds of banners, and my Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. impersonators that I had to round up, and my fireworks guy, and I had my people racing around trying to load the trucks and I’m going absolutely insane, and Uncle Bruce shows up, gets right in my face and says, ‘Cliff, I have to talk to you.’ But Eric, I just couldn’t. Not right then, so I ask Jeanette to talk to him, and she comes back and says, ‘Cliff, you’ve got to talk to Uncle Bruce,’ so I do, and he says, ‘Cliff, Kitty is going into cardiac arrest,’ and I ask him how he knows that and he says, ‘Because I just know,’ so I tell Jeanette, go take him to the vet.
“Well, the vet brings the cat back to life, when we all know he shouldn’t have, but now the cat has to be fed intravenously, so who gets the job of doing that but ol’ Cliff here. Eric, it’s so insane. Here I am, nailing a bag to the wall at 42 Baghdad Street and sticking a needle into the forearm of a blind, all but dead cat!
“Also, Hee-Young and Hans showed up the other day and asked for the car back.”
“Hans?” I said. “I thought he was long out of the picture.” I recalled my suspicions of the German “auto executive” who was Hee-Young’s sometime boyfriend and who had showered Uncle Bruce with suspect gifts, including the Chrysler mini-van that Uncle Bruce had been driving for the past couple of years.
“Yeah, I don’t know where he appeared from, but he just showed up one day with Hee-Young. Uncle Bruce didn’t want to give the car back, but after all, it was Hans’s, so he had to give it back, except that it was all dinged up, pretty much all the way around—proof that UB should no longer be driving, but try telling him that.”
“So, the next day, I pull up into the driveway, and I see your grandmother’s old Toyota, with the hood open and a battery charger hooked up. Uncle Bruce and Angelo are there watching it, and I think, No, you’re not really going to use that old piece of crap!”
The “old piece of crap” was Gaga’s 40-year-old faded yellow Toyota Celica. I laughed at the thought. The gold Mustang convertible that was in the garage was even less salvageable, despite its being seven years newer than the Toyota.
“I said, ‘Bruce, what the hell are you doing? You can’t drive this old hunk of junk. You’re going to kill yourself or somebody else. And nothing works on it. Why the hell don’t you just go out and buy yourself a new car?’ –‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d have to do lots of research.’
“Then do your friggin’ research!’ I said. Oh my God, Eric. It’s just too much. What research—quote, unquote—did he do on Alex before sending him enough money to buy a Maserati?”
“Speaking of Alex, that son of a bitch piece of shit.” Cliff’s tone changed. “About two weeks ago Uncle Bruce told me he wasn’t going to send Alex any more money, that it was time for Alex to stand on his own, and that giving him money wasn’t the best thing for him. . . Did I tell you he didn’t come over here from London after all? I thought maybe my rant got through to Uncle Bruce—you know, when I yelled at him after we found out they’d plan to stay up in Hamburg . . . But then just last week, I walked over to the house, and when I was in the back entryway, I could hear Uncle Bruce on the phone. He had the speaker on, and I could hear that it was Alex. Uncle Bruce couldn’t see me, so I stood there and listened. The son of a bitch Serbian was asking for more money—a thousand pounds, which, of course, he said he needed immediately, like right now. I couldn’t stand it, so I opened the back door into the kitchen and stepped right in. At the same time Uncle Bruce said, ‘Gotta go,’ and slammed the phone down. ‘So, who were you talking to?’ I said, and he said, ‘My broker.’
“Yeah, right,” Cliff laughed. “The guy who will make him broke!
“Anyway, the next day I was over there to check on Uncle Bruce and the cat, and I saw a whole stack of 100s—along with a whole lot of other crap—on the kitchen table. I couldn’t tell if they were all 100s, but the first few that I could see were. I went over later in the day and the cash was gone, and you gotta know it was cash he hauled over to Western Union to send to that piece of shit, good for absolutely nothing Serbian son of a bitch.
“Eric,” Cliff said after catching his breath. “I feel like we lost our momentum, and we’re not going to get it back unless and until you get the rest of the family behind you, behind us, because right now, it’s just Cliff at ground zero dealing with the same old bullshit. The buildings are falling apart, tenants are leaving and nothing’s getting fixed, and it winds up being me, and he doesn’t know how much I’ve shelled out of my own pocket to take care of stuff.”
Cliff had caught me off guard. After the scene featuring the polish lady and the social worker, I’d lost steam and determination. I empathized with Cliff, but I no longer felt a compulsion to fix what was irreparably broken. Before it could be cleaned up, the mess in New Jersey would have to await UB’s total, undeniable incapacity—most likely his ultimate demise.
“I’m sorry, Cliff,” I said, “but that’s the cold, cruel reality of it.”
“I hear ya,” he said, but I knew he didn’t agree.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
