Thursday, December 17, 1992
“I’m not. This is all so unnecessary” (That’s funny, you’re the one who called for this hearing.), “don’t talk to me, you disgust me, I can’t believe you’re doing this, you went behind my back.” (Excuse me, you went behind mine. You didn’t even consult me about Muir and Singh) “I told you what we were doing.” (Precisely the problem. You told me what you were doing with my mother) “You were never there for your mom. How come I had to leave college and come home to help move your mom?” (What the fuck is he talking about? This must be some very minor incident from the past that obviously had a major impact upon this poor impressionable babe. My mother and I have moved at least 10 times. Some of those moves I approved of, some I didn’t. Some furniture I’ve moved dozens of times, but there were a few I missed, such as the time I had a sprained wrist. I believe the incident he is talking about is the one where Sandy called me once and said “Don’t worry about it, Scott’s helping.”)
It is the longest litany of hatred I’ve ever experienced. This kid has clearly been brainwashed against me his entire life and he is letting it all hang out, mimicking his mother’s most horrible attributes, treating me with total contempt. He has some whacked out portrait of his hedonist uncle bounding through his head, the black sheep of the family, the man who really doesn’t love his mother. Which is why it is so important that he never let his evil uncle get his unclean hands on his mother’s cold, hard, assets, or he will squander those assets on God knows what evil purpose, and then throw his poor mother out in the street.
“You’ve always been an embarrassment to your family,” (continues the snot nosed son of my rich sister, the one who hated the fact of my birth and censured no impulse to remind me of it) “you’ve been a fuck up all your life,” (Says the high-minded kid from out of town, whom I barely know), “you make me sick,” (The kid whose rich parents support him, who has no idea what it’s really like out there), “you don’t give a damn what happens to your mother,” (He sees my mother once a year), “all you care about is the money” (This is pathetic. I’m broke. Accusing me of only wanting money is like accusing a drowning man of only wanting air.)
I ask him one final question; if my mother gets ill, who should the hospital call? His answer? Muir and Singh of course. There’s a reply with heart. Scott is blind to reason. He thinks that when lying on her deathbed, my mother will want her court appointed accountants by her side, not her only son. Scott’s mother just died. He was by her side. How would he have felt if I had shown up, thrown him out of the room, and insisted that his mother’s accountants be with her instead of him?
Finally, Mr. Goldring, my mother’s court appointed attorney, explains it all to me. There are no assets. Years ago, my sister transferred everything of my mother’s into her name. Eventually, my mother’s assets would be separated from my sister’s. He was told there would be about $200,000. In the meantime, my mother is being supported by an interest free loan from Herbert Potter, which he will be repaid from the eventual assets. My mother wants me to be her conservator. He has checked with the home and found out that I visit regularly, so he concurs. But since I can’t be bonded for $200,000, and since the assets aren’t in place yet, he is going to recommend that I be given conservatorship over my mother’s person, but that Muir and Singh be given conservatorship over her assets.
Which is what happens. After Scott grandly asserts that his mother had spent six whole months finding just the right place for my mother to live, he wins the added clause that I can’t move her. It is an interesting argument. He doesn’t say that my mother is in a great place, that my mother loves it, that she doesn’t want to move. His only argument is that his dead mother had spent a long time picking it, leaving out that she picked it because it was near her home and easy for her to visit.
My mother’s an old Jew. I live in the Fairfax District, which is the center of old Jewdom in Los Angeles, and which is where my mother lived much of her life. There are more than 20 convalescent homes just like my mother’s current one within blocks of where I live.
If she were moved here, my mother would be in her element since she lived around here most of her life. We could take walks to Cantors, she wouldn’t have to hear from the Christian bible thumpers who wander through Vista del Sol on a regular basis, and, most important, I could easily pop in for a lot of visits. Anybody with the slightest shred of decency who looks at the world from my mother’s point of view will see that her greatest joy is the time she spends with me and Buster.
Without asking my mother what she wanted, without asking me what I wanted, Scott fights tooth and nail to keep my mother where my sister wanted her - convenient for a dead woman to visit her and inconvenient for me, the only person left to visit her.
Then Herb Potter, my sister’s husband, tried to kill me. It was deliberate and highly motivated, a strategic maneuver of the utmost immorality. It was the sixties. I was a hippie bum. The army would do me some good. So my brother-in-law tried to get me drafted during the height of the Vietnam war.
I turned 18 in 1969, not a good year for any American male to be out of school. It was the largest single year of induction for the entire Vietnam war. The lottery hadn’t started yet, and the world was full of crazed teenagers willing to do absolutely anything NOT to go to Vietnam. I didn’t want to go to college either, I wanted to go to the Greenwich Village to study with Lee Strasberg, which I did.
Dan Quayle used family influence to save his ass; Bill Clinton lucked out on the lottery. I simply didn’t register, and I would have gotten away with it if my redneck, right-wing, war mongering, ex-marine, philandering brother-in-law hadn’t turned me in to the FBI. He obviously thought I was a traitor to my country, that the army would do me some good, turning me into a real man, someone who would shut up and follow orders instead of wasting my time thinking for myself.
Needless to say, I took it seriously and very personally - this deliberate attempt to deprive me of my life - by my sister’s self-righteous, hard working husband. My mother felt the same. She realized as much as I did that whatever attributes I might have, being a good soldier is not one of them. I would unquestionably have been killed in Vietnam, and after the FBI left, and after my number came up low in the lottery, my mother and I had to spend years fighting my induction.
Among a million other signs of affection throughout my lifetime, my mother did everything in her power to save me from the sure-fire death of Vietnam. And these little weasels actually believe that I don’t care about her? Don’t they realize what a horrible and insidious accusation they are making?
Where was I when Scott had to help my mother move? Where was he when I moved her a half dozen other times? Where was he when my mother accidentally poured hot bacon grease all over herself and I had to rush her to the doctor? Where were they when I took my mother to the arboretum and we picnicked next to a waterfall? Where were they when my mother cursed out Herbert Potter, not just for leaving her daughter, but for turning her son into the FBI, knowing full well that the United States army did more mortuary business in 1969 than in any other year of that hideous, illegal, immoral war, kidnapping thousands of poor teenagers from their homes, shipping them overseas alive, and retrieving them in body bags.
When Herb and Sandy finally parted, my mom said good riddance, I said good riddance, and my mom and I both vowed we would never speak to him again, a vow I managed to keep much longer than she did. Herb trotted off with his actress, Sandy bravely brought up her kids alone, refusing any child support from Herb. She didn’t want his money, even though he made it with an investment made by my mother. During the next ten years, I spent more time with my nephews than their father did.
I stayed with my mother until I was finally found 4F. As far as my mother was concerned, Herbert Potter was the man who deserted her daughter and tried to kill her son. She would despise the fact that his $10,000 is supporting her right now.
So I spent my own time with my mother. I wrote off the other half of my family, just as Sandy wrote me off, and just as Scott and Randy have chosen to follow the party line. How did they manage to inherit the whole megilah of my sister’s irrational hatred, the body language and high blood pressure, the guilt trips, the self-righteousness, the holier-than-thou attitudes? Scott is a truly dangerous species. He’s fighting for A CAUSE, and he’ll never let any facts interfere with his mission.
I had hoped that this insane attitude towards me would have vanished upon my sister’s death, but instead it has multiplied with her spawn. Clearly my sister must have made some sort of deathbed wish to her son Scott, making him promise that he would never, ever, let her evil brother get his hands on their mother’s money. Scott, blinded by pain, is unable to make a decision on his own. He’s doing what his mommy and daddy told him. His mother, who died in his arms, must be proven correct. He must protect the kingdom from enemies within, using his paranoia about the devil in me to justify actually doing all the horrible things he accuses me of doing.
He suspects me of treachery so he acts deceitful, he is so sure that I am out to screw my mother that he is willing to go against my mother’s wishes and try to discredit me, he is so sure that my mother needs protection that he is protecting her from the very thing she needs the most, the companionship of her son.
I have no idea how much time my sister spent with my mother as long as I didn’t have to be there with her, and she had no idea how much time I spent.
And this lack of knowledge has been inherited by her son. My nephew is the single most seriously misguided youth I have ever met. He’ll make a fine lawyer. I can still picture him, the moral virtue oozing from every pore, swearing he didn’t want to see me, ever again, unwilling to talk about it, blind to any possibility of discussion, totally fed up and exasperated, brimming with hatred, hiding away in the hallway, wracked with pain, unable to face his uncle, the contemptible scum who wanted to take care of his dying mother.
Looking back on my year, I don’t see what I could have done differently. Maybe I’m blind to my own frailties, but it seems like I stood up for every principle, battling bureaucrats on every possible front. At times, it seemed the entire universe was conspiring to rip my family apart, giving me all the blame, despite my total lack of power to influence events.
Committing this tale to paper has an exorcistic power. Now that it’s written down, I don’t have to think about it any more, you do. I can go away and digest my food, acquire a good night’s sleep and get on with important things, like the laundry. 1992 is transferred to computer memory where I can download it whenever I feel the need.
