A Shock to the System - Stevenson Richard - Страница 5

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Bierly eyed me levelly and said with what looked like carefully controlled emotion, "Of course I didn't kill Paul. Phyllis is—she's a serious, out-of-control alcoholic, and her brain is—she's a crazy, obnoxious old booze hound. Even when she's sober she's a chronic liar. Probably all the Haigs are. Paul was. Based on what Paul told me about him, his father was a liar too. Unless Paul was lying about that."

He blinked away something he didn't seem to want to remember and went on. "But the fact is, I loved Paul. In spite of everything, Paul Haig was—you're gay, aren't you? I think I've heard about you."

"Yes."

"Have you ever loved a man? I mean, not just sex, but really had a deep love for that person?"

"Yes, I have. Most recently for the last nineteen years."

He looked at me sadly. "That's what I know now that I want. I thought I had it with Paul."

"His death must have been awful."

He shook his head. "Oh, I lost him before that, and that was awful. Paul was the love of my life, I thought—the first man I ever really gave myself over to. I had always been ashamed of being gay. I come from a family and a place where being gay is the most disgusting thing there is. That's why I could never accept my gayness and ended up with that asswipe Vernon Crockwell. But then I met Paul in Crockwell's group, and before long—I think the craziness of everything we were going through in Crockwell's program hit us at the same time and we started holding on to each other just to keep from going insane."

"That probably happens a lot in programs like Crockwell's."

"It happens a lot in Crockwell's own program," Bierly said.

"Dr. Crockwell's Inadvertent Dating Service. But for you and Paul things went awry after a while?"

"Paul was an alcoholic and couldn't control it," he said grimly.

"Like his mother is an alcoholic and his father was when he was living. That's basically what went wrong between us—Paul's drinking. He was sober at first, and going to AA. He'd been in the program off and on for a couple of years—much to Phyllis's consternation. She wanted him to drink, needed him to drink, and so sooner or later he did. It nearly always started up again after one of his lunches with Phyllis. Paul had some other problems too—lying was the main one. But his other flaws all had to do with his drinking, and his being gay, and his parents, especially Phyllis, whose boozy, twisted love was the kiss of death for Paul."

Although I wasn't sure, Bierly didn't seem to mean this literally.

He went on. "How the Haigs functioned at all is a mystery. When Paul was sober and he was being honest about himself and his family, he admitted to me what a mess they were. Lew, his father, was a real-estate developer who almost went to jail once in some kind of bid-rigging scheme. Paul said another time Mr. Haig got himself out of a financial fix he was in by blackmailing a rich senator, and he got caught at that too. Paul's father died of cancer, but cirrhosis of the liver would have killed him even if the cancer hadn't. Phyllis is in total denial about her alcoholism, and I think Paul's sister, Deedee, is probably alcoholic too. Paul tried—he really tried so hard—to be strong and honest and realistic about himself. But he couldn't. Maybe eventually he would have. But I couldn't take it after a while—the lying, the hidden bottles, the binges—and I gave up on him."

"Because he was screwing up your life too?"

"It got to be a matter of emotional, or maybe even physical, survival. Paul sometimes did some pretty crazy stuff when he was drunk, and sometimes I'd go along with it and regret it the next day. But mostly, I just couldn't stand not knowing which person he'd be from one day to the next. Finally, just after Christmas, when he really went off the deep end with a bottle in his hand, I got my own place and moved out."

I said, "The pros all seem to agree that in these unhappy situations you have to save yourself first. How did Paul react?"

Bierly shrugged. "He got drunk."

"I'm sorry it turned out that way. I hope you'll do better with the next man in your life."

He looked around to make sure we weren't being overheard. Then he leaned toward me and said in a breaking voice, "How could anyone think I killed Paul? Even that idiotic, deluded Phyllis—how could she say such a thing? I loved Paul. I couldn't live with him, and I couldn't be his lover anymore, but I still loved him. I could no sooner have killed Paul than—" Bierly looked nauseated at the thought—"than I could kill anybody. I'm just not a violent person. Oh, I have a temper. People will tell you. I can lose it, like a lot of people. But take another person's life? It's just not in me. I don't know if I could kill another person even in a war or in self-defense. So when Phyllis told the police I killed Paul and they called me in and questioned me—it just made me want to throw up."

I said, "But you don't think Paul killed himself."

"No."

"And you don't think his overdose was an accident either?"

"No, I don't think it was."

"Why not?"

"As for an accident, it wouldn't be like him. Paul was careful about pills. He never mixed drugs and alcohol. I was surprised when he told me he was on Elavil, just because any kind of drugs made him nervous. He didn't even like it when I'd smoke some weed or whatever once in a while. Alcohol was Paul's drug of choice."

I said, "And why not suicide?"

He shook his head emphatically. "Not a chance. Was Paul a nervous wreck? Oh, yes, poor Paul, he was one anxious son of a bitch—pun intended. He smoked too much, and he worked too hard, and the strain of trying unsuccessfully not to be the drunk his mother wanted him to be was brutal for Paul. But he coped. He found ways not only to survive but to function. He was a true Haig in that respect. And there's another thing: Paul had not only been on antidepressants and feeling relatively relaxed the week

before he died, but he hadn't been drinking either. I either saw him or talked to him on the phone almost every day, and I'd gotten to the point where I could tell if Paul had been drinking. He hadn't. He'd even started going to AA meetings again, he said."

The waiter, probably under corporate orders, was hovering, so I signaled for him and ordered a pizza of his choice. He said sausage and broccoli would be nice, and we said okay.

I asked Bierly, "With Paul's improved outlook, did you think there was a chance you and he might get together again?" More tentatively, I said, "Or did he think so?"

"Paul brought it up," he said, his voice going unsteady again. "As for us living together, I didn't want to. I told him I'd think it over, but I don't think I could have done it. At a certain point last winter—I can even remember the day—I realized I just didn't love Paul anymore in that way."

"Did you tell him?"

Bierly looked away and his face darkened. "No, I never did. When we separated at the end of last year, it was supposedly temporary—till Paul quit drinking permanently. But I guess I never really believed he'd stay sober. And one day I was sitting across from him at Queequeg's during Sunday brunch and he was talking about something unimportant—I have no idea what it was—and I looked over at him and I knew he would always be my friend but that we would never be lovers again."

"That happens to every couple," I said. "But it's usually just an attack of existential uncertainty, and it passes. Though this sounds different."

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