The Family of Max Desir Read online

  The Family of Max Desir

  by Robert Ferro

  Dutton • New York

  1983

  The Family of Max Desir

  by Robert Ferro

  Copyright © 1983 by Robert Ferro

  Designed by Earl Tidwell

  First American edition 1983

  Dutton, New York

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ALSO BY ROBERT FERRO

  Second Son (1988)

  The Blue Star (1985)

  The Others (1977)

  Atlantis, The Autobiography of a Search (1970)

  with Michael Grumley

  THE FAMILY OF MAX DESIR

  Max Desir loved his Italian-American family--even after his iron-willed father exiled him from its intimate innner circle. Max Desir loved his lover, Nick, with whom he openly took up life first amid the enchantment of Rome, then amid the realities of New York. Two loves so deeply felt--in a man so painfully divided....

  Robert Ferro

  One of my top five recommendations for lost gay novels is Robert Ferro's The Family of Max Desir published thirty-five years ago, in 1983. Amazingly, it spans three generations and seventy years in the Desiderio family, from Sicily to Brooklyn to New Jersey, in a mere 215 pages. It works because the writing is so swift and right and alive. Reunited with distant relatives after decades apart: "Then he recognized certain faces, older and changed, like music played slower." Pushing forty, the gay character Max worries when he cruises the Village: "People will no longer turn to look at him, will see nothing but themselves being seen." Everything rings true about this family, including their complicated, shifting degrees of acceptance of Max's actor boyfriend of fifteen years, Nick Flynn.

  Ferro's other novels are his debut The Others from 1977, his final book Second Son when he was dying of aids in 1988, and his third novel, The Blue Star, which Stephen Greco selected for Tom Cardamone's The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered —blogger at Band of Thebes

  Praise for THE FAMILY OF MAX DESIR

  “Nobody has told this story before, and Robert Ferro has the power to make his telling definitive … his clear, impassioned narrative moves with wit and sensuous energy. It has shaken and excited me more than any recent American fiction. I want to give it to people. I want everyone to read it. ”

  —Walter Clemons

  "A STUNNING ACHIEVEMENT … not limited to the gay experience, but touches upon the very nature of the human condition … renews faith in the American novel … One of the finest (and certainly most moving) novels of the year."

  —James Fritzhand, The Advocate

  “An honest, eloquent and entirely original novel … at once realistic and mythological, intensely personal and public … The Family of Max Desir is a triumph.”

  —Edmund White, (Boys Own Story)

  "Sensitive and original … beautifully sustained and often disturbing … at once deeply personal and universal."

  —New York Native

  THE FAMILY OF MAX DESIR

  by Robert Ferro

  For Michael Grumley

  THEN CAME A LONG GENTLE CURVE IN THE HIGHWAY, like the bottom of an arabic letter. On the outside of the curve lay a flat sloping field and the remnants of an orchard. It was a hot day at the end of August, 1977. The man at the wheel of the car was Dan Defilippo, Max Desir’s uncle. He was driving to Philadelphia to see a man to whom he hoped to sell printing supplies. On the seat next to him a heavy machine of some printing use shifted as the car entered the curve. Traffic was light. A car of coeds returning to Temple University followed fifty yards behind. As the machine leaned toward him, Dan put out his arm to steady it. This sudden movement did not startle or alarm him particularly; nor was it the first time it had shifted. But as he steadied it on the seat he felt a tingling sensation rise up his left arm and shoulder, so that he had difficulty gripping the wheel. He had the impression of being hit with something soft and wet, like thrown fruit. It seemed to splatter behind his eyes. The car left the highway, casually it appeared, and drew a gentle curve of its own across the field, although on the slope it picked up speed. An impact, to which last purpose a certain ancient apple tree had survived, threw him thirty feet clear.

  The coeds were student nurses at the university hospital nearby. Still, for five or six minutes he did not breathe, and in that time most of his brain died.

  In intensive care they said the brain stem was damaged; that cranial fluid, which had built up to cause severe pressure, must be drained. His face and body were covered with plum-dark bruises in swirls like marbleized paper, but he was otherwise unharmed. He lay amidst the chaotic medical welter of emergency. A respirator tube entered directly into his trachea. Others were fitted into his nose and the vein in his wrist. His head was tilted back awkwardly, to accommodate the tubes, but to Max this angle seemed more the result of the struggle Dan’s spirit was waging, in a place just hehind the eyelids—a war in which the spirit fought for space in which to continue living.

  The days went by. The bruises lightened, faded. The family was allowed, two at a time, to spend five minutes of each hour at Dan’s bedside. They were encouraged by the nurses to talk to him, to call him back, as if he were just off in the distance, headed in the wrong direction. Max could not bring himself to say a word. He held his hand instead, and thought thoughts that beckoned, that reached into a void of sleep and oblivion. The nurses told of patients emerging from comas remembering everything that had been said to them. They had heard and understood but were unable to respond.

  The women wore dark clothes to the hospital. It was an endless wake. Their strengths, their reserves were drained. Anxiety, fear, strain, fatigue, one by one were drawn in Marie Desir’s eyes, as if these emotions could

  help in some prescription for her brother’s recovery. Dan’s wife, Phoebe, seemed sturdier. She cried often quietly for short periods, after which she seemed restored. There were dark circles under her eyes and she didn’t look well, but her skin did not begin to whiten, sag and crease up like Marie’s; the capillaries did not suddenly map themselves out on her cheeks. Phoebe was younger, stronger, with a history of self-reliance. She saw perhaps what a distance lay ahead of them. It was Marie who seemed to have made the decision to decline as Dan declined, to release her grip on life until he regained his.

  After three weeks intensive care was no longer thought necessary. Dan had stabilized into a deep, apparently irreversible coma. Sometimes his eyes opened. The pupils reacted to light, to movement, like those of a small, wary animal in the hollow of a tree. At times he would yawn, stretching his mouth around an endless moment of air. His younger brother Frank spent hours of every day speaking to him, convinced he could eventually get through. It did not seem to Frank that any amount of blackened brain could prevent him from calling his brother back.

  Toward the end of the second month Dan made a struggle and lost. It was as if he tried to wake, to fight his way back. Alternate periods of rigidity and relaxation progressed through a feverish restlessness that built nearly to convulsions. Finally his eyes opened and swept the room, resting momentarily on everyone present. The eyes blinked once; round, focused and clear. Then they closed. The mind, as if having come to the surface for a moment, sank down; the fever cooled. The body lay abandoned and derelict, anchored by tubes. In another month he was moved, to a nursing home near Phoebe on Long Island. He was given fourteen hundred calories of nutrients a day, intravenously. His face seemed younger, without lines or strain. A therapist exercised his useless arms and
legs twice a day. Marie and John Desir went to see him regularly, usually on Sunday. Max asked his aunt Phoebe if she understood that he did not want to see Dan out there. And Phoebe replied that they must all deal with this in their own way.

  I.

  MAX’S MOTHER, MARIE DESIR, BORN DEFILIPPO—sixty-eight years old, five foot two, favoring Barbara Stanwyck playing a lady—was shopping for another dark dress in a mall not far from her home. She was to meet her maid Greta for lunch in fifteen minutes and was in something of a hurry. A glamorous young woman carrying a tray of perfume came up beside her.

  Would you like to try our newest scent? the woman asked, spritzing a tiny flagon in Mrs Desir’s direction. A nauseating moment of sweet flowers and lacquer went by.

  It’s called Lovewish. The woman smiled, waiting for a compliment.

  It’s horrible. Marie Desir waved the air in front of her face. You shouldn’t do that to people, she said, and left the store.

  She had always shopped: even before her husband’s pleasant business success shopping had been a focus of her life, an activity she enjoyed and even needed as an expression of hope, satisfaction, anxiety. Once, during an earlier period, when her four children were young, a man came to the back door and said he had been sent to check the water softener in the basement. She let him in and he went down the stairs. A moment later he called up to her.

  Hey, lady, come down here. I want to show you something.

  She was alone, in her nightgown and robe. Just a minute, she replied, and shut the cellar door. Taking her pocketbook and keys she left the house, dressed as she was, and drove to a department store. There she bought her way out of her fright, starting with underclothes and nylons, shoes, gloves, a dress and a hat to replace the nightclothes. For the next few hours she bought everything she liked, everything she needed—two thousand dollars’ worth—a fortune that reflected her perception of the dangerous man in the basement.

  Greta, the maid, had been hired as part of the new regime, now in its tenth year, when the Desirs moved into a big house they had built near their married children, Jack, Robin and Penny. Greta Hollis was a tall, sturdy Dutch woman in her mid-fifties. When Max happened to see Garbo out walking on Fifth Avenue, his first thought was of how much she had come to resemble his mother’s maid. And the next time he was home he had Greta put on a pair of dark glasses and Marie’s fur coat, and made her stand in front of a mirror. I’m telling you, Greta, Max said, you look just like her.

  The house was the size of a small country club, tall and white, with six two-story columns across the front, fifteen rooms, a twenty-five-foot high den, billiard room, sauna, many unused bedrooms and, as Marie put it, the kitchen of life. To her it was like a house in a Bette Davis movie—Charlotte Vale’s house, Mrs Skeffington’s house —with generous spaces and details, pilasters and cakelike moldings, with deep fireplaces, a winding staircase and niches filled with dogwood.

  Aside from the fact of her employment, Greta’s attachment to Marie was more like that of a big, adopted daughter. Marie had always had cleaning help but never a full-time maid. And Greta, who was hired as a necessity, had therefore been incorporated into the family. She worked hard and kept the place pristine, but beyond anything else she was a companion, and she and Marie spent a great deal of time together. Today they were to meet at a restaurant called Hannigan’s, a recent discovery, a glass conservatory near the shopping center with jungle plants and intricate luncheon plates for ladies and their friends, or daughters, or maids.

  The hostess was busy elsewhere when Greta arrived and she had trouble locating Mrs Desir. Then she saw her, sitting alone at a table framed in a high window at the side, and she rushed over because Mrs Desir had her face in her hands and was sitting quite still, apparently crying. Greta put her hand on Mrs Desir’s shoulder and said, What’s the matter? What’s wrong?

  Marie did not look up and kept her face covered. Once or twice she seemed to shake her head sharply, as if saying no impatiently. Then she took a deep breath, lowered her hands and looked up at Greta. She was ashen except for two spots of red in her cheeks like rouge, though she wore none. Her eyelids drooped as if in deep fatigue. She opened her mouth to speak, there was a twitch to one side of her face, and she said softly, Beyeah.

  Drink some water, Greta said. What’s the matter?

  Greta helped her with the water, some of which ran from one side of her mouth. Mrs Desir seemed able however to hold the glass firmly by herself. Greta then crouched by her side with an arm around her shoulders, trying to decide if Mrs Desir was unable or unwilling to say what had happened. Was she ill? Had she been harmed by someone? Greta positioned herself to look directly, clinically, into the woman’s face, with the close scrutiny of a maid who has looked for trouble and dirt in every unknown comer.

  Mrs Desir looked up. Now there were tears, tears it seemed of fright and pleading. Her hand clutched Greta’s arm.

  It’s all right. Can you walk? I’ll take you home.

  By the time Greta had got her into bed, had drawn the curtains and lighted a fire in the hearth for visual comfort, Mrs Desir seemed herself again, though tired. Greta telephoned Mr Desir, who came immediately. When he entered the bedroom Marie sat up and turned with a false but effective brightness, as if to ask, Why have you come home? and even, Why ever am I in bed? She lay back against the pillows and looked at him.

  What’s this? John asked, and put his hand on her forehead.

  It’s nothing, she replied. I got a migraine at Hannigan’s. She had a long history of migraines.

  I was about to take one of those pills from Carson, she said. Immediately Greta went into the bathroom and reappeared with an open palm and a glass of water. Later, in the kitchen, Greta presented her version. She described the twitching, the inability to speak, how the water had dribbled from Marie’s mouth.

  And she cried, Greta said. She cried.

  John had installed an elaborate intercom system in the house, and by pushing a button on the phone by her bed, Marie could listen to what was being said in the kitchen. Now she replaced the receiver carefully and gazed at the fire. She thought of her mother, who had been dead for many years. She thought she knew what had happened in the restaurant. But it was over now and it might never happen again.

  But a few months later, while they were attending a boat-owners’ convention in Miami, it all fell in on her. She awoke in the middle of the night seized by an unknown and horrible fear. She felt simultaneously a numbness here and a pain there, two feelings that seemed to exchange places. Getting out of bed, she fell noiselessly to the carpet, barely interrupting John’s snoring. Her right leg was numb. She lay on the floor, unable to rise, unwilling to wake John, then pulled a blanket from the bed and covered herself. She lay there waiting for the light to come and for the numbness to go. At dawn she pulled herself into bed and fell deeply asleep. If anything it was John’s cologne that woke her. He was dressed and on his way down to another meeting.

  You have a luncheon with the women, don’t you? he said, bending over her and stroking the side of her head the way he did sometimes.

  She nodded, not wanting to chance a syllable, then closed her eyes sleepily. She awoke again a few hours later. The numbness was gone but her arm hurt, and when she spoke to her reflection in the mirror there was a lag between the forming of the words and the words— like an echo. The idea of missing the women’s luncheon held for her the force of preemptive defeat, the loss of a battle barely drawn.

  Except for one friend, she was seated at a circular table with nine strangers, the middle-aged wives of moderately successful men, all of whom owned either a sailboat or a powerboat. The theme of the convention was unrelievedly naval. The men wore uniforms and braided caps, were led by officers of the bridge. The woman Marie knew at the table wore a white middy blouse in a show of spirit. First the woman smiled across at her, then frowned at Marie’s reaction—a lopsided smile that brought only half her face into play.

  Holding Marie�
�s own quizzical look with one of deep concern, the woman came around the table.

  Marie, are you okay, dear?

  Marie gave her the same smile, with her lips pressed together, and nodded, amid the din of four hundred ladies being seated. In these moments something in the left hemisphere of her brain was taking on charm, then form. Where it hadn’t been it now was. The right side of her face twitched as cells winked out and went black. Her right eye blinked. The cords in her neck became taut. She looked down, away from her friend, a napkin raised to her lips.

  Okay, Marie, it’s all right honey, the woman said, and took Marie in her arms.

  Some hours later his brother Jack telephoned him.

  It’s one of those calls, Max. It’s Mom.

  He flew to Miami that afternoon. When he came into the room she was sitting up, as if she were on a beach blanket instead of a hospital bed, with the same brightness, the same reassurance that this was not a catastrophe. She asked if he noticed a slight sag to one side of her mouth and he replied, yes, he could just make it out. He sat on the bed and held her hand. He looked around. Here was another hospital room. Outside the window, beyond the air conditioning and the wooden louvers, were the humidity, the palm trees, the flatness of Miami. Inside, all the orderlies were Cuban, all the patients elderly Jews. The lobby looked like a bank, everything was impeccable. The food in the cafeteria, he would discover, was delicious. No one can do this sort of thing like the Jews, his father said.

  After a while the results of a cross-sectional scanner were brought in, which showed a lateral picture of Marie’s brain, like a lemon slice, composed of the most total symmetry. Looking at it Max was unable to find anything out of place, any dot or dotlessness that did not have its counterpart. Then, when it was pointed out, he could see a short dark line of damage, like a scar or even a photographic fault. It indicated a small ruptured dam, with a flow of blood down a tiny valley, wiping out all inhabitants.