Charlie was sleeping now. His hospital bed had been wheeled closer to the glass wall so he could read in the sunlight, and he’d dozed off after a few pages. He had no strength, no stamina, and the pounds were melting from his frame like butter. And he was so pale. Arthur had begun insisting on colored sheets so that he could look at his son without feeling he was being absorbed into the mattress.
Charlie, Charlie, Arthur thought as he stared at him. If only you’d listened! Dear boy, you never meant to hurt anyone. You don’t deserve this. Please don’t die, not until I can work up the courage to tell you I understand, that for a while I...I was like you. Almost like you.
I had been back in the sixties, in the hedonistic dens behind the Victorian facades of Haight Ashbury. Arthur had been looking for himself, trying anything—drugs, and sex. All kinds of sex. For a year he had lived in a commune where group sex was a nightly ritual. Every combination was tried—men and women together, women with women, and...men with men. He had tried it for a while, even enjoyed it for a while, but as time went on, he realized it wasn’t for him.
Been there, done that, as the expression went.
But he’d never considered it as a lifestyle. Yet the memories haunted him. What if someone from those days stepped forward with stories of young Artie Crenshaw having sex with other men?
Many a night the possibility dragged him sweating and gasping from his sleep.
Not fair. Those days were long past.. An aberration. He’d repented, and he was sure he’d been forgiven. He wanted Charlie to be forgiven as well. But would learning about his father’s past lighten Charlie’s burden?
Arthur didn’t know. If only he knew.
So much he didn’t know. Especially about AIDS. Arthur had begun his own research, learning all he could—more than he wished to know—about HIV, ARC, CD4, p24, AZT, TP-5, and all the rest of the alphabet soup that was such an integral part of the AIDS canon. He hired a clipping service to comb the world’s newspapers, magazines, and medical journals for anything that pertained to AIDS. The flow of information was staggering, mind-numbing. What he could not comprehend he brought to Dr. Lamberson’s attention.
The phone rang. Emilio answered it, said a few harsh words, then hung up.
“Who was it?” Arthur said without looking around.
“That puta reporter again. She wants an interview with Charlie.”
Arthur closed his eyes. Gloria Weskerna from the Star. It still baffled him how she’d got his home number.
Somehow she’d picked up word that Senator Crenshaw’s son was sick. Something was wrong with the son of a potential presidential candidate. What could it be? She and others of her tribe had started sniffing around like stray dogs in a garbage dump, hunting for anything ripe and juicy. Emilio had tightened security, carefully screening the nurses, setting up a round-the-clock guard at the front gate, and spiriting Dr. Lamberson and the nurses in and out in the black-glassed limousine.
“Change the phone number, Emilio.”
“Yes, Senador. If you wish, I can change this reporter’s mind about hounding you.”
Arthur turned to face his security man. “Really? How would you do that?”
“She might have a serious accident—a bad fall, perhaps, after which her home could burn and her car could be stolen. She would have so many other things on her mind that she would not have time to bother you.”
Emilio said it so casually, as if planning a shopping list for the supermarket. Not a glimmer of amusement lightened his Latin features. Arthur knew he was not being put on. Emilio’s sense of humor was about as active as Charlie’s immune system.
Arthur trusted Emilio implicitly, but sometimes he was very frightening.
“I don’t think so, Emilio. We’ll just continue to stonewall. Our position will remain aloof: We admit nothing, we deny nothing. Implicit in our silence is the stance that these rags are not worthy of serious attention. That’s the only way to keep the lid on things.”
“As you wish, Senador.”
Arthur realized he could keep the lid on Charlie’s illness only so long as he stayed alive. If he died...
He reminded himself with a pang that it wasn’t really an if, but a when...and soon.
When Charlie died, the shit would hit the fan. He might be able to dissuade the medical examiner from doing an autopsy, but the death certificate was another matter. He could not expect Dr. Lamberson to jeopardize his reputation, his medical license, and his entire career by falsifying a legal document.
He winced as he imagined the headlines:
SENATOR CRENSHAW’S SON DIES OF AIDS!!
That would be damaging, but he could weather it. He could not be held accountable for his son’s actions. In fact, he could turn it around and blame Charlie’s death on the moral bankruptcy of modern America. America was on the road to ruin, and who better to turn it around and lead it from the darkness into the light than a man who had been so grievously injured by the nation’s moral turpitude?
Yes, he could survive, perhaps even benefit from public disclosure of the cause of Charlie’s death. His only worry was what rats might crawl out of the woodwork when they heard that Charlie had died of AIDS. What vermin from his past might step forward and say, “Like father, like son.”
Arthur knew he could weather either one alone, but he would fall before the combination of the two.
Everyone would be properly supportive at first, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the various elements of the coalition he’d been forging began edging away from him. All his born-again friends and admirers would begin looking around for someone else to support, someone who’s immediate family was not so intimately associated with sodomy.
And then his dream of a renewed America would go down in flames, be reduced to ashes.
He treasured two things most in his life: his son and his dream. Charlie’s AIDS was going to steal both.
He looked again at the Times and Daily News clippings in his lap. Like everyone else who read a paper or watched the network news, he’d heard about the four supposedly-cured cases of AIDS in New York. They’d sparked some hope in the growing darkness within him, but after his experience with Olivia he’d learned that cynicism was the only appropriate response to miracle cures. It saved a lot of heartache.
But the Times article said the CDC was getting involved... budgeting an epidemiological study. If Arthur was correctly reading between the lines, it meant that these cures had been sufficiently verified for the CDC to judge them worth the effort and expense of sending an investigative team to Manhattan.
Interesting...
The CDC was headquartered in Atlanta. Arthur had myriad contacts in the Bible Belt. No problem learning what was going on in the CDC, but it might be wise to have his own man on the scene.