The Price of Love

Harry Baker would have his hands full DE-institutionalizing his son but he also had his hands full with his own medical condition. He knew he had four, maybe five years or more if only he could quit smoking, before the emphysema that was gradually drowning him would take him under. He owed it to Iniga… he’d promised her that much… and these were the few kinds of promises men like Harry were honor bound to keep.  She was there in Walter Reed after he’d managed to verify, through Marcel Fournier, that she was a veteran of the resistance in France: a concentration camp survivor and, while in the resistance, a rescuer of American pilots during D-Day in Normandy. He’d done so when Gotson reached him through old contacts in the OSS and informed him she was suffering cancer in a flea-bag hotel in NY City.

He came onto her ward with a bouquet of flowers and a gnawing anxiety. Her skeletal frame was hardly discernible from the tubes, oxygen mask and wires to monitors. He put the flowers, Red Gladiolas, in a vase and sat by her as she slept.

She awoke with a start, “Hurrry?” she slurred…. sedated, trying to say through a thickened tongue, Harry.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“And, along comes the injustice of God.”

“What, Iniga?”

“That fate would shove your fuckin’ face in front of my eyes before I die.”

“Gratitude was never your strong suit…”

“I am grateful that I can tell you about our son.” Her contempt softened as she said, "Our Son".

Harry took note that the lines of premature age, and the darkened skin under her eyes wrought by cancer, had not withered away the beauty of her cupid bow lips or the steely determination of her grey eyes no longer framed by wild shocks of black Basque hair. Her eyes were set deep in the death’s skull of her shaved head but were still like his: those eyes were pleading. He wasn’t used to the sight of Iniga submitting to pain and it was most disconcerting to see her in physical weakness.

“He is in California…” she paused to take another hit off the oxygen mask; “A boy’s camp of some sort. He still has your name, Papa.”

“What do you want me to do about him?” Harry could tell, as soon as he protested, that any objections he might have would be vanity, but he tried… “He doesn’t know me.”

“He needs help. I had no idea of his situation…” she arose on one arm and spoke forcefully, “until we tracked down that damned wet-nurse.”

Harry saw again her fierce determination as she continued, “The cur left him at an orphanage in Los Angeles... like a donation … a bag of groceries!” she wheezed…”I was too weak to follow-up…. but I found out where he is now.”

Harry hadn’t given Nick much thought at all over the past sixteen years. He was honest with himself about it. Love wasn’t part of his vocabulary. It was an expense… a far too costly investment in time and energy to commit… to do what he knew he needed to do now. He needed to do it now because he realized… or allowed the realization… that deep recess of buried emotions… that he loved Iniga and in loving Iniga and his betrayal required something g of him.

“It is up to you Harry, find him.”

“I will.

“Try to give him a life Harry.”

“I will.”

“oh, yes, Harry…”

“Yes…”

“Thanks for the gladiolas.” She turned her head to the side “Now go away please, before I cry.”

Harry knew then what the rest of his life would be. He took the first flight from Dulles the next morning and never saw Iniga again.

Promises aside, Nicky had very little contact with his dad after Harry set him up in Charleston South Carolina with his new step-mom, Marilynn. Marylyn and Harry were separated and Harry was out of the picture for the most part. Nick had taken to studies under a tutor he’d been assigned and even managed to complete prep-school at Bishop England Catholic High School in South Carolina before Harry used his connections to get him into The Citadel. Noting Nicky’s physique and size, Harry hoped Nick would adapt and choose a military career and be primed for life there better than as a civilian in Ivy League colleges.

Nick loved the discipline at The Citadel more so than he did the studies and, because he was possibly the most physically intimidating “knob” on campus, he was not hazed as much as other Fourth Class Cadets there. However, engineering, mathematics, military history and instruction weren’t for him but, hell, Nick had already been institutionalized and anything, even the rigors of military school, was a good deal better than the dumbed-down kindergarten of Los Prietos. He decided, after his first year there, he had no desire for a military career nor did he have any academic aspirations. He discovered that a gift for gab opened doors for him that even the best colleges could. By this time, he had taken to the newly discovered privileges of wealth and the prestige that wearing the right clothes, driving the right car and living in the best neighborhood could avail him. He felt that he was wasting time sitting in classrooms when there was so much money to be made in the world beyond the walls of the Citadel.

While Nick was at The Citadel, and because Harry was hardly ever around much, Marilynn acquired a Realtors’ license and set up an office in Mount Pleasant. Nick fell right in with her after leaving the Academy and the two; Nick’s natural good looks, glib tongue and his innate ability to read other people; together with her pretentious airs and business acumen, made them a good team in the polite airs of Southern congeniality. Marilynn was a matronly southern-belle whose pretenses were less annoying to Nick than they might have been had he not already spent some time in The Citadel acquiring manners.

 Nick took his libido into town to the gay bars and picked up on an occasional prostitute too. He hadn’t the pedigree for the society girls and he was a twenty-seven year old bachelor with what would be a good prospect anywhere else but Charleston. While sitting at Dudley’s, complaining about his last affair that ended just when he thought he’d arrived, a real-estate acquaintance asked him, “Why honey, are you wasting your time with these stuck-up bitches in Charleston? You don’t have the pedigree for these Southern Belles…”

“Yeh, that’s true, but if only…”

“If only… if only, darlin’… if wishes were fishes.” Nicky listened out of boredom but paid attention when this swish with the fishes was on to something when he quoted the Beatles song, “You should get back to where you once belonged… Jo-Joe.”

“You mean California?”

“Oh sweetheart, you are getting warm…” he nuzzled up to Nick’s ear, “C’mon, Nicky, you know Santa Barbara is teeming with trust-fund babies who could care less about class distinction.”

“How do you know about Santa Barbara?” Nicky wiped the moisture from his ear with his sleeve.

The friend leaned back on his bar stool slurring, “Oh, they have one of the mo-ossst delightful gay-bars in the whole world, lover boy,” he then stood with his chest puffed out proudly, “go to the Pub and be sure to tell Frankie, Donny of Charleston says, ‘Hi there’.”