Naomi wasn’t making sense of most of this. She was trying to comprehend: Karl Kinch was Madelena’s son? Which meant: Karl Kinch was her uncle, or half-uncle?
“Well, I never told anyone. Some friends may suspect—something. But no one knows with certainty. ‘Kinch’ is a name randomly chosen by the father and by me—‘Kinch’ is no one’s surname. The baby—the child—lived with the father’s older sister who was eager to take care of him, in her vast, near-empty apartment on Central Park West. I visited often, but I did not live there. It was rare that I would stay overnight. I have always cherished privacy, solitude—it is the great luxury for a woman! Karl learned young to be utterly independent, indeed rebellious, and to resist authority. Until his health began to deteriorate he was remarkably independent. Of course Karl was brilliant from the start, before he could even read. It has been a kind of fate, his brilliance. Because he is also scattered in his interests, and he is easily bored. You saw how fidgety he is—he has always been that way. He was that way in the womb! He can keep a secret at least, or has kept our secret all these years—I don’t know what will become of him when his health worsens, how he will behave. Those psychotropic medications he takes are very powerful, and can corrode the personality. You might not believe it from today, but Karl is a good, kind, moral person—he is not vindictive or malicious. But when he loses control . . .”
Madelena was speaking rapidly, gripping Naomi’s hand. Lights from the street rippled across her face like fitful emotions. Naomi was astonished, she had never heard her usually poised and evasive grandmother speak so openly, heedlessly.
“My life is no one’s concern but my own. I don’t defend myself. Karl has nothing to do with the Voorhees family. It is none of Clement’s business. Karl is mine, exclusively—he has no one else. His father is no longer living but if he were, he wouldn’t be concerned about the state of his offspring. Though he did leave a reasonable amount of money for Karl, in trust.”
Naomi was still rather dazed thinking: uncle? Half-uncle?
She was eager to share the news with Darren.
“I am hoping that you will keep this secret, Naomi. Will you?”
Naomi murmured yes.
Reluctantly, yes.
“You see, Naomi: I am so worried about Karl. He takes medications for MS, and medications for HIV. He has a very fluctuating white blood cell count. His eyesight is worsening. Sometimes he has such tremors, he can’t hold a pen. He can’t play piano, which he needs badly to do, when he composes. After your father was killed I became vulnerable to—many things . . . And after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, from which some of us have yet to recover . . . I had once been fearless, or so I’d thought. People still say that about me—‘Oh, Madelena is fearless.’ But I know better. I am not fearless at all. I am filled with fear. I loathe myself, that I didn’t try to reason with Gus more—I might have pleaded with him to quit the line of medical work he was in, to channel his idealism and energy elsewhere—anywhere . . . God knows there are plenty of poor people, including children, he might have cared for. I did try a little to reason with him, but not enough. I have been such a great believer in the freedom of others, to choose their own lives. I regret that now. Maybe I could have saved him . . . I can imagine how anxious your poor mother was, all those years. For of course something was going to happen to Gus, eventually. It was terrible, terrible! Those years, and so much fear. Abortion centers were being firebombed, abortion providers were being threatened. And killed. In my dreams even now sometimes I am arguing with Gus. And Gus laughs and tells me to relax, nothing will happen, he will be fine, it’s all exaggerated—remember, Gus would so often say It’s all exaggerated . . . Do you remember? Yes? At the funeral I thought someone might say, as a joke, or rather not as a joke, in Gus’s voice—Hell, it’s all exaggerated. Or, I was thinking, that might be carved on his gravestone—It’s all exaggerated. Naomi, I’m sorry—I don’t know what I am saying. Where are we? Are we almost home?”
Naomi assured the agitated woman yes, they were almost home.