My grandfather was having a bad day. Most of us were gathered in the library when he came down the stairs, his mustache and eyebrows freshly dyed and his wig askew but impeccably dressed in his three-piece suit.
The hair color and wig were recent innovations. My grandfather had always been vain about his appearance and bemoaned his receding hairline. Now his full head of hair gave him a slightly shaggy appearance. Nobody said much about the wig, but the hair dye caused considerable consternation in the family, especially when we were going out in public. My grandfather often left the cheap drugstore dye on too long, turning his eyebrows and mustache a jarring shade of magenta. When he joined us in the library, obviously proud of what he’d done, Gam said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Fred.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad!” Donald yelled at him.
“For fuck’s sake,” Rob swore under his breath.
Maryanne, touching his arm, said, “Dad, you can’t do that again.”
He was standing by his love seat when I came into the library.
“Hello,” he said
“Hi, Grandpa. How are you?”
He looked at me and reached for his wallet, so thick with bills I was constantly surprised that it fit in his pocket. He carried a wallet-sized photograph of a half-naked woman in his billfold, and for a second I was worried that he planned to show it to me, as he had when I was twelve.
“Look at this,” he had said, sliding the picture out of its slot. A heavily made-up woman, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen and might have been younger, smiled innocently at the camera, her hands holding up her naked breasts. Donald had been looking over my grandfather’s shoulder. I hadn’t known what to say and had looked at him for some indication of how I should respond, but he’d merely leered at the picture.
“What do you think about that?” My grandfather had chuckled. I never heard him laugh. I don’t think he ever did. He usually expressed amusement by saying “Ha!” and then sneering.
Now, instead of a picture, my grandfather pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and asked, “Can I buy your hair?”
That was something he’d ask me every time I saw him when I was growing up. I laughed. “Sorry, Grandpa. I need to hang on to it.”
Elizabeth walked over carrying a small box in one hand. She looped an arm around my grandfather’s elbow and leaned against him. He looked ahead blankly, disengaged his arm, and left the room.
Shortly after, Donald came in with his kids and Rob’s stepson. With the exception of Eric, they were all teenagers, the boys tall and chubby and wearing suits. Donald went to sit on the chair by the TV, and Ivanka climbed on his lap. The boys started wrestling. Donald watched the action from his chair, kissing Ivanka or pinching her cheek. Every once in a while, he’d stick his foot out and kick whichever boy was being pinned to the floor. When they had been younger, Donald had wrestled with them—a fight that had basically consisted of his picking them up, throwing them on the ground, and kneeling on them until they cried uncle. As soon as they had gotten big enough to fight back in earnest, he had opted out.
When Liz and I were as far out of harm’s way as we could get, she held the box out to me and said, “This is yours.”
We didn’t exchange gifts outside of Christmas, but I took the box from her, curious, and opened it to find a vintage stainless-steel Timex with a small, plain face and an olive green band.
“Somebody gave it to you for Christmas,” she said. “You were only ten, and I thought you were too young to have something that nice. So I took it.” She left the room to look for her father.
Later Donald and Rob huddled together in the breakfast room, their shoulders close and their heads down. My grandfather stood nearby, leaning forward almost on the tips of his toes, trying to hear what they were saying.
Fred said, “Donald, Donald.” When he didn’t respond, my grandfather tugged on Donald’s sleeve.
“What, Dad?” he asked without turning around.
“Look at this,” Fred said. He held up a page that had been torn out of a magazine, an ad for a limo similar to the one he already owned.
“What about it?”
“Can I get this?”
Donald took the page and handed it to Rob, who folded it in half and slid it onto the table.
“Sure, Pop,” Rob said. Donald left the room. Whatever had once tied them together, Fred’s remaining sons had given up all pretense of caring what their father thought or wanted. Having served his father’s purpose, Donald now treated him with contempt, as if his mental decline were somehow his own fault. Fred had treated his oldest son and his alcoholism the same way, so Donald’s attitude wasn’t surprising. It was jarring, though, to witness the open contempt. As far as I knew at the time, Donald not only had been my grandfather’s favorite, he had also seemed to be the only child of his that he liked. I knew my grandfather could be cruel, but I thought the largest measure of that cruelty was reserved for my father, who, to my shame, I thought had probably deserved it. I didn’t know how lonely and frightening life in the House had been at the time of my grandmother’s illness all those years ago. I didn’t know that my grandfather hadn’t taken care of any of his children during the year of Gam’s absence or that Donald had been particularly vulnerable to that neglect. And far from supporting and nurturing my father as he ventured out into the world with the sincere intent to be a success, Fred was really only enabling Donald, waiting until he was old enough to be of use.
In 1994, I moved from my Upper East
