The Hormone Factory (16 page)

“What sort of drugs?” he asked suspiciously.

I assured him I had no idea. The conscientious medic said there must be some pill bottles lying around to tell us what medications my brother had been taking. I told him I had already looked and had not found any, neither in Aaron’s office, the scene of the crime, nor back here at the house. But the doc wouldn’t let it go. Like a dog refusing to surrender its bone, he demanded that I give him the names of the doctor or doctors who had written the prescriptions. I promised the fellow I would do everything in my power to find out, and finally got him to leave. The obstinate quack insisted he’d come and have another look at his patient in the morning, before Aaron gave himself up to the police. That meant I would have to get Aaron out of there before the pit bull’s return. I shuddered to think what might happen if anyone got wind of the true story. I thanked the doctor warmly and shut the door behind him with a sigh of relief, only to have to face Rivka, standing there demanding answers.

“What in God’s name is going on, Motke?” she said, staring at me with a mixture of distrust and worry. “Aaron raping a girl? There’s no one on earth more good-natured than your brother. Surely he would never, ever do anything like that! What’s come over him? And what was that crazy story of yours about the pills? Did you give him something nasty to swallow? That new preparation, perhaps, since that’s all you know how to talk about these days? Did he get injected with that testosterone crap
Rafaël’s been working on? Is Aaron one of your guinea pigs? Has Rafaël been experimenting on him? Tell me it isn’t true!”

That was one of those times when I regretted having married a smart woman who wouldn’t let me pull the wool over her eyes. I asked her to make us a cup of tea, and then sat down at the kitchen table with her.

“Rivka, I’m going to tell you something in the strictest confidence. A secret I trust will never pass your lips. You’re making me come clean with you, because your guesses are not that far off. You’re right, but you’re also wrong. Rafaël has nothing whatsoever to do with this. He knows nothing about it and it’s crucial he never does. Aaron was given that stuff by a specialist he consulted, because all the signs were pointing to the fact that his body was producing too little testosterone, and it was ruining his life. Something must have gone wrong with the dosage. I had at one point suggested to the doctor he might want to step the treatment up a bit, since Aaron was in such a bad way. But if it gets out that my brother was receiving a bigger dose than the one prescribed by Rafaël, all hell will break loose.”

“So Aaron and Rosie are now the victims not only of that
brilliant
discovery of yours, but also of your everlasting impatience? Christ! Why do you always have to have it your way? Why can’t you ever accept the fact that someone else may know better?” Rivka jumped up, snatched a sponge off the counter, and wiped the table clean for the second time.

“Well,” I admitted, “I really did think I was doing Aaron a favor. I was wrong, I now know that, to my chagrin. But if a word of this leaks out, it’s curtains for the company. A catastrophe, not just for myself or for our family, but for the hundreds of workers who will lose their jobs and become beggars. So if only for their sake, Rivka, you’d best keep quiet about this. I
shall do everything in my power to contain the harm this will do to Aaron.”

“And Rosie?” she asked. “That poor girl, what are you going to do for
her
?”

“I’ll give her whatever help she needs, rest assured of that.”

“Tell me, though, Motke,” she said, looking at me coldly, “give me one good reason why I should stick up for you. I’ve been raising our four girls, I run your household, but that’s about it. There hasn’t been much else to keep us together these last few years. Why should I go to bat for you?”

The coldness of her tone shocked me.

“You’re not the only one who’s upset that we seem to have drifted apart,” I said quietly. “I too wish we could get back to being as close as we used to be. How the hell did we end up here?”

Rivka had sat down again and was staring darkly into her teacup. She stirred it with her spoon and then looked up at me earnestly. “You’re miles away,” she said. “Sometimes I have the feeling that we’re living on two separate continents that are drifting apart. There’s a wide and savage sea between us preventing me from reaching you. It’s as if I can just catch the occasional glimpse of you standing over there on your iceberg, pontificating. I often find myself thinking that somewhere inside that arrogant prick, surely, there must be the man who once swept me off my feet. The winsome lad I wound up marrying because my father insisted on it, to spare my family the scandal. And even though no one ever asked
me
if I wanted to get married, our marriage did make me happy at first. Where is that Motke, the man who showed me the Amstel River by night, who bewitched me with all his charm, and taught me there is nothing more thrilling than two beings in love becoming one? Where did that man go? I miss him.”

I think I felt sort of sorry for her then; she looked so terribly sad and lonely. I got up, kneeled by her chair, and gave her a hug. Her body stiffened at first, as if steeling itself against me, but then she snuggled her head against my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, darling,” I said, caressing her gently. “You don’t deserve this. The boy you fell for, or, I guess you might say, the boy who fell on you”—here I chuckled softly—“is still here, I promise. Here, feel.”

I took her hand and placed it over my heart. “He’s still in there, always. Except that of late he hasn’t been coming out as often as he’d like. He has to act tough, he’s shouldering heavy responsibilities, he’s under a lot of stress; there are so many people who depend on him. If he were to show his open, vulnerable side, the wolves out there would tear him to pieces in a heartbeat. He’s had to harden himself; he has to keep fighting. Otherwise, they’ll just walk all over us—me, you, and the girls.”

Rivka lifted her head and shook it in denial. “No, Motke, I’m not buying it. You say you wouldn’t be able to get through life showing your softer side. That the only way to survive is to fight, to make others obey you, to crack the whip. I don’t buy it, I refuse to accept it. Loving others, having compassion—those are our greatest strengths.”

I took her head between my hands. “You are a woman, Rivka, of course that’s the way you feel. Your life is at home with our little girls; your job is to teach them how to love. But I’m standing out on the prairie where I can hear the hyenas howling, ready to pounce. I’m guarding the entrance to our lair, to stop wild beasts from devouring you and the children. That is the man’s role, the role of the boy you once fell for.”

“I believe there’s another way,” she insisted. “I want there to be another way; I can’t accept this. I say we stand shoulder to
shoulder outside our lair and set an example of how to face the world with love and kindness.”

We looked at each other as if we were really seeing each other for the first time. Her frown slowly relaxed into a smile, and I found myself smiling back. Slowly, slowly, with almost painful deliberation, we leaned closer and kissed, long and passionately. Rivka pressed her body against mine, and, with our lips still locked together, we stood up and I led her to the room with the guest bed. Aaron was in the room next door, oblivious to the fact that this was his last night of freedom, and I made love to my wife in my disgraced brother’s house. It was the best time I ever had with her, the best sex I ever had with any woman.

That night, sometime during those pitiless, endless hours after my twin brother’s life was destroyed by a testosterone overdose and both my business career and my company were hanging in the balance, one of my sperm bored its way into one of Rivka’s egg cells, and Ezra, my only son, my youngest child, was conceived.

27 …

It was still dark when in the chilly and bleak early-morning hours, I walked Rivka home. We strolled along the dank, deserted streets, still dazed from the experience of the past few hours, when we’d been closer than ever before. When Rivka kissed me goodbye at the front door of our house, she said, “Tonight I felt he was with me again, the boy I once fell in love with. I can’t say I know where we go from here, but it’s nice to know that boy is still in there somewhere under all the body armor.”

She shut the door softly, and I hurried back to Aaron’s house. There I took a shower, brewed a pot of coffee, and, gathering up all the scattered glasses of stale whiskey, overflowing ashtrays, and dirty plates, stacked them on the kitchen counter. Then I quietly went into Aaron’s bedroom. He was still in bed, wrapped in a blanket. His eyes were open; he was staring at the ceiling and didn’t react when the door opened. I returned to the kitchen to pour him a cup of coffee and carried it back to the bedroom, then sat down on the edge of the bed and offered him the hot brew. He sat up slowly, as if every movement cost him extraordinary effort, took a few sips, and then gave the mug back to me.

“How are you doing, kid?” I asked.

He gazed at me with half-closed eyes, but it was as if he didn’t see me. He was somewhere else entirely; I imagined he was drifting through some dark and dismal ghost world, haunted by swarms of demons.

I wished I could have sat with him like that all morning, waiting for him to come back to earth from that distant realm, and let him calmly get used to the idea that this would be the last time he’d wake up a free man, at least for the foreseeable future. But there was no time for dawdling. My brother had to be delivered to the police station before the pit-bull doctor’s return.

“Aaron,” I said carefully, unsure how he’d take what I had to tell him, fearing it might bring out the madman in him again, “I spoke to the police yesterday. Rosie had gone to see them, and I schmoozed until I was blue in the face to get you off. The officer in charge wasn’t unsympathetic, but there’s such an uproar about what happened that we can’t just sweep it under the rug. You’ll have to go to the police.”

Aaron lifted his head. His voice sounded hoarse, as if the previous day’s bellowing had strained his vocal cords. “Are they coming for me?”

“No,” I said softly. “I promised I would take you in. But I’m going to get you the very best lawyer in the business.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t want a lawyer. I deserve my punishment, the harshest punishment there is. I’m prepared to serve my time. There’s no denying I did what I did, and no excuse for it either.”

He made a move to get out of bed, but I held him back with a gentle push. I would have tried to persuade him that he had the right to a defense, that he should not deprive himself of the opportunity, but he had spoken with such fierce determination
that I just didn’t have the heart to insist. There was some other urgent business to get off my chest, however.

“We do have another thing to discuss, Aaron, before we go,” I told him. “About the doctor who gave you those injections—I’m afraid that was what made you behave the way you did.”

“I’m sure that it was,” Aaron said, starting to fold the blanket painfully slowly. His hoarse voice was barely audible as he went on. “As it turns out, our esteemed professor’s heaven-sent discovery possesses satanic powers. Are you intending to go ahead anyway with producing that tripe?”

“We’ll have to see, naturally. Something went terribly wrong, and you were the victim. And Rosie too, of course,” I added quickly, since Aaron was about to interrupt me. “But,” I went on, “if word gets out that you were being treated with that stuff, our goose is cooked. And, well, it’s obvious the doctor gave you an overdose, but I beg you to go easy on him. Yesterday I put out the story that you’d been stockpiling a whole slew of different antidepressants, and that those had been responsible for everything going awry.”

“You’re a rat, Motke,” said Aaron, for the first time looking at me, with narrowed eyes; “you are the most despicable sleaze-bag I know. I’m ashamed to have you as my brother. I’d bet my life that the reason you’re all in a sweat right now isn’t so much because of what I’ve done to that poor girl, or because I’m going to jail, but because you’re worried this little ruckus might expose your own dirty hands in this whole sordid affair, am I right?”

I looked him straight in the eye, and he stared right back at me. A staring contest, to see who would back off first. It took everything I had not to look away. Aaron’s eyes bored stonily into mine. Looks can kill, they say. It was agony. In the end I had to avert my eyes from his. I looked down at my feet, thinking
that Aaron did not even know the half of it; he had no idea how involved I had been in his downfall. I considered making a clean breast of it, but before I could make up my mind, he spoke up.

“It would serve you right if word got out about the way you’ve abused your position. I have committed a single, heinous wrong, and I am ready to atone for it. But
you’ve
been getting away with one dirty deed after another, and you go about it in such a sneaky way that the victims don’t even realize it’s not their own fault. I’ve known you long enough to have an idea of how you get those girls to think they’re just as guilty as you of whatever obscene thing you’re doing to them.”

I wanted to interrupt him, to beg him for the sake of the firm not to reveal any of this. He put a hand over my mouth and went on. “Now you’re going to try to persuade me not to do anything to endanger Farmacom’s survival. That if people knew, your house of cards would come tumbling down and the whole workforce would be out on the street. You’re good at that; you always hide behind the ‘greater good,’ which allows you to get away with your shenanigans. But you don’t fool me, Motke. It’s all about you, always. You are the center of your universe, and everything else is only there to serve your interests.”

He paused for a moment and then continued. “But the scales have fallen from my eyes. I will never again defer to your wishes. I could make a huge stink about what you’ve done, which would land you behind bars. But no, I want to have as little to do with you as possible, I don’t want to be locked up next to you in the clink. I’ll keep my mouth shut about your proclivities, not to spare you, mind; you don’t rate my clemency. I’ll keep silent because I am just as guilty of your sins as you. All this time I knew what you were up to, and I turned a blind eye to what I saw. I was just another of the millions of chicken-livered cowards in this world.
Because of people like me, people like you get away with your evil behavior. A wimp who doesn’t dare open his mouth isn’t any better than the one doing the dastardly deed.