“I spoke to him both times,” she said, “but I’m not sure he recognized me. He just said he was waiting for someone. I said, ‘Owen?’ But he just snapped at me and told me to go away.”
Owen apologized on Max’s behalf and dashed over to the grocery store. He found Max standing outside the place, unable to account for his afternoon and not at all certain who Owen might be. Owen managed to persuade him to come home, and when Max woke up after a two-hour nap he was his old self again, irritated that Owen was so frantic.
They lived in an area of Manhattan that was full of clinics and hospitals. That turned out to be lucky on another day, toward the end of summer, when Owen received a call from Bellevue. A kindly phlebotomist, an enormous Jamaican woman, had noticed Max on the corner of First Avenue and Twenty-ninth, repeatedly starting out across the street and then turning around and heading back. She had brought him to work, and the ID in his wallet had enabled her to call.
“He needs to have a full examination, child. They’ll be wanting to do exams and scans and all kine a ting.”
Max had done a perfect impression of her accent all the way home, this myna bird part of his character apparently undamaged.
“What if you hadn’t had your wallet on you, Max? You could still be wandering around Manhattan like a homeless person.”
“But I did have my wallet,” Max said, suddenly red in the face. “I did have my wallet and I don’t need you nagging at me like a harpy.”
Owen tried not to be hurt by these sudden tempers. When Max refused yet again to be tested, Owen went to a pharmacy and had an ID bracelet made. To his surprise, Max didn’t put up any protest about wearing it. But how could Owen go into residence at Juilliard next month if Max was wandering around Manhattan in a fog?
His episodes had seemed to be entirely random, but he developed another behaviour that occurred only in the evening. Just before suppertime, he would be sitting in his La-Z-Boy with a book in his lap or watching the news. Suddenly he would announce, “I want to go home.”
The first time he said this, Owen felt a deep chill run through him.
“What are you talking about, Max? England?”
Max was staring in indignation at the room, as if someone had tried to pull a fast one.
“This isn’t my home. I want to go home.”
“Max, you are home.”
“This is not where I live.”
“It is, Max. This is your home. I’m Owen, your nephew, remember? We live together here in this apartment.”
“That’s fine for you to say, but I want to go home.”
“Max, let’s just watch the rest of the news, okay?”
After an hour or so Max would calm down, and when he had had his supper you would never know he had suffered a moment’s confusion. Owen talked to his own doctor, who said it could be Alzheimer’s, it could be a lot of things, but there was nothing that could be done unless his uncle came in for an exam.
It was Labor Day weekend when Owen came home one afternoon to find Max his old self again, whistling as he spread wigs and costumes over the dining table.
“Sit you down, nephew,” Max said. “I would acquaint thee with a show of pure genius.”
“No more shows, Max. Season’s over.” Owen went to the fridge in search of a snack.
“Bollocks,” Max called after him. “That impudent wench robbed us blind, cost us at least three performances, and an untold price in peace of mind and security in my old age-should old age ever become a concern. I plan to make good my losses.”
Owen selected a can of iced tea from the fridge and pulled out half a peach pie Max had made the previous weekend.
“Sometimes things don’t go the way you planned,” Owen said. “That’s what you’ve always told me.”
“Yes, and on such doleful occasions one must improvise. Which is why you need to look at this.”
“You want a piece of pie?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course I want a piece of pie.”
Owen cut two slices and brought them to the dining table.
Max was holding up a photograph of the Upper East Side-Madison Avenue, it looked like, but it could have been any one of a dozen corners in Manhattan, with its bank, its New York Sports Club, its Gap and Banana Republic.
“A bank,” Max said, tapping a finger on the Chase sign. “A very handsome little bank, well framed for larceny and but lightly defended.”
“Uh-huh,” Owen said around a mouthful of pie. “You’re going to rob a bank now?”
“A most excellent plan if you would but let me speak into the fearful hollow of thine ear.”
“Max, it’s a bank, and we don’t rob banks. This is New York, and we never work in our hometown. Pookie is dead. Roscoe is laying low. It’s time to retire while we’re still alive. Let’s not push it.”
“Look at these.” Max put on a green surgical cap and mask. “Dr. Abe Pfeffernan, oncologist,” he said, tapping the name-plate on his chest. “Pfeffernan-you have to love the name. I have a set for you too. Unless-would you prefer to be a nurse? You’re young enough. Elizabethan lads played women all the time. Test of a real actor if you can play a member of the opposite sex.”
“Listen, Dr. Pfeffernan, you and I are specialists. Dinners only. Republicans only. Summers only. Even that was dangerous enough. Now you want to rob banks?”
“No, no, just this one. Look at these.” He held two wigs aloft, one on each fist. “I’ve always wanted to play a New York Jew. Nothing obvious. Not the Hasidim, too easy. No, no. I want to do the classic New York Jewish professional. The sort of doctor, lawyer, dentist we all like to have-should we be in the dolorous circumstances that require such services. You could be a nurse, and I could do Ben.”
Ben Levine was their neighbour down the hall, an English professor to whom Max had long ago taken a shine when he had referred to Macbeth as the first film noir.
“A little putty on the nose, some curls. The accent’s easy, the manner …” He went into a series of shrugs and a mild New York accent. “What am I, a common thief? Of course not. I swear to you, Murray, I’m only thinking of your education, hand to God.”
He held up a vast T-shirt decorated with the Nike swoosh. “Dr. Abe Pfeffernan, marathon man. See, this is where the genius comes in. The bank, you notice, is next door to a health club. I have cased the joint, as the saying goes. There is an exit from the health club, sans camera, that I will prepare ahead of time. We wear running gear under the scrubs. In one split second we change from medical professionals into sports fanatics. Central Park is a mere block away. You run there. Within sixty seconds you’ll look like a hundred other people circling the reservoir like something out of Dante. I, meanwhile, will have stashed props, wigs and swag in a locker at the health club, where I shall proceed to hoist weights with the ease of a Titan.”
“Max, it’s the Upper East Side in broad daylight. Hundreds of people are going to see us.”
“Thought of, dealt with.” Max scooped up his pie and demolished it in three swift bites. He drank down most of Owen’s iced tea. “Men’s room downstairs,” he said, brushing crumbs from his belly. “We exit the bank, head to the lav. There we dispose of the scrubs and exit severally, I to the health club, you to Central Park. They’ll be looking for two doctors who don’t exist.”
“Max, it’ll be broad daylight. The makeup and wigs are going to be totally obvious.”
“We’re talking about a microperformance, lad. A cameo of mere minutes.”
“Please, Max. Let me take you to the doctor. You have no sense of reality anymore. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and there’s probably some medication out there that could help straighten you out.”
“My last doctor died of a heart attack at age forty-six. Shows how much they know.”
“Max, I can’t let you do this.”
“Since when do you let or not let, you puppy? Look here …”