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Heredity is the issue. Of concern is schizophrenia. Though rarely
symptomatic, Remington (formerly Stuyvesant) has Rockefeller on edge, afraid his
"old man’s eccentricity", is in fact a disease, a mental disorder, its
predisposition passed between father and father-to-be.
Tact a
pretension of neither, the combatants square off: |
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ROCKEFELLER
When mom gave
birth to me were there any...?
REMINGTON
Complications?
You know very well that she...
ROCKEFELLER
No; I mean with
me?
REMINGTON
Such as?
ROCKEFELLER
Emotional
problems.
REMINGTON
That could make
you feel
at fault? You
weren’t aware she died.
ROCKEFELLER
Maybe not at
the time. But how about...?
REMINGTON
Later? Like how
much later? What do you remember?
ROCKEFELLER
Not much,
really. Only what you’ve told me. ‘Your mother died during child birth.’ You’ve
never elaborated.
REMINGTON
Well, that’s
probably true. When a man’s wife dies it’s...
ROCKEFELLER
Difficult? You
must have resented me.
REMINGTON
No, never. You
were always a gift from your mother I didn’t deserve.
ROCKEFELLER
And yet you
hardly ever speak of her. Not at all. What was she like?
REMINGTON
If you’re
worried about your pedigree, don’t look to her; the buck stops here.
ROCKEFELLER
I’m more my
father’s son than my mother’s?
REMINGTON
Mine
are the suspect genes. Get to the point. Have you had the foetus screened?
ROCKEFELLER
No. Not yet. We
were hoping...
REMINGTON
Oh, I get it;
demonstrate Daddy's defective and mother-to-be aborts?
ROCKEFELLER
Something like
that.
REMINGTON
Well, sure; I
can help you out. Tell your fiancée I’m crazy as a loon. Bring her here to
Wellington; I’ll prove it. I'll even perform her D&C myself.
The look on Rockefeller’s face tells Remington what he needs to know; his son
and would-be daughter-in-law want their little bastard.
Remington’s face, for Rockefeller, is harder to decipher; devious, is his
elder—shields thoughts, obfuscates feelings, and plots every move with the
cunning of a chess master.
ROCKEFELLER
Crude,
Grandpa.
REMINGTON
Touché.
Rockefeller wants to run, as he ran as a boy, his stocking feet slip-sliding,
making cartoon turns and spinning his steps like wheels, regaining traction,
racing from the bogeyman (personified by Remington), frantic to escape yet
seldom pulling it off, his hiding places exposed by him whom he resembles
so closely he might have had more luck eluding his reflection.
ROCKEFELLER
Was I born
alone, or did I initially have company?
REMINGTON
‘Company’?
Remington counters cautiously, wary of the innuendo, mindful of his personal
fascination with the concept of twins, his personal conviction, rather,
that his once-attached brother did, does, and always will exist.
ROCKEFELLER
I mean doctors,
nurses, a midwife; you know; others?
REMINGTON
Oh, I see. No,
all alone. Other than the principals, of course. You were born in my laboratory.
It was I who botched the job. By the time we reached the hospital, Juliana had
bled to death.
Yes, the blame
is mine. Which is why I’ve never told you, presuming you, like I, would consider
such a fuck up unforgivable.
ROCKEFELLER
You... Weren’t
there repercussions? I mean, legally?
REMINGTON
Was I arrested,
you mean? No. At the time, I was Board Certified. Your mother’s labour came on
rather abruptly; we were at home; the lab was next door. She walked in
hale and hearty; I had to carry her out half-dead. I’m sorry, and have
been sorry, for going on twenty-three years.
Why, after all this time, make such a candid confession? Rockefeller, dubious,
tries to second guess the plot—truth, and his father’s versions, often distant
cousins. Cognizant of his own ends, he redirects the dialogue.
ROCKEFELLER
So, you and I
are unique; no siblings; each of us, since birth, our parents’ only
child?
Startled at being asked point blank to expose his so-called ailment, his
psychosis
doctors labelled it when he had no self-defence, when he was scarcely ten years
old hence ill-equipped to state his case convincingly, his parents and a team of
shrinks in league to lock him up, to inundate his system with a drug that nearly
killed him, left him twitching like some spastic, left him babbling like some
dolt, weeks, months, YEARS; it took forever to regain a sense of self esteem,
mauled as Stuyvesant had been by ridicule, by condescending adults and their
mocking little brats, his peers, whose taunts and pranks and meanness had been
an ever-present scourge—an everlasting lesson. Those unlike everybody else
were better served by keeping their oddness under wraps. Stuyvesant had;
Remington did. Rockefeller-twin, whose presence was an absence (like a
shadow-obscured moon still in orbit, if invisibly, still in contact, if covert)
had been replaced, in some respects, by Rockefeller-spawn. The former had,
nonetheless, remained an elemental influence, an Other joined
metaphorically, metaphysically, who lent his alter-ego uncanny objectivity.
REMINGTON
You
are an only child, whereas I am a Siamese twin, the better half of whom
expired during our separation.
Astounded by (and sceptical of) this stunning revelation, Rockefeller waits for
his father to elaborate.
REMINGTON
(continued)
How I know that
I was once a we may sound implausible. X-rays refute my claim. I
bear no outward scars. My parents staunchly denied it. Counsellors and
physicians described me as
delusional. I was even thought insane and fed a pharmaceutical
cure that might actually have worked; it taught me to be disciplined. Once
freed from pharmacology, self-control eventually held sway and I was able to
avoid any further drugstore
remedies. Nonetheless, my sibling stayed a close, if soto-voce
confidante. We’ve communed, at least in spirit, since our bodies parted
ways—his dead and buried; who knows where (?); mine hale and hearty; save for
pangs that persist as reminders of our once-cohesive selves... inclined to
trespass on one another’s thoughts, finish each other's sentences, share
intimate conversations like virtual duets, me singing treble, him singing base,
or vice versa, our harmonies intoning certain truths...
(Bullshit.)
...that I find
positively crucial in an Age of Reason rent with irrationality.
(Meaning any
and all
perspectives at odds
with your point of view?)
The very notion
that we 21st century humans are inviolable...
(Here we go
again;
you’re ranting.)
...somehow
sacrosanct due to fantasies bred of holy hocus-pocus, is like a clan of cavemen,
scared of the dark, cleaving to identity, afraid lest evolution proceed to
strike a match. Neanderthals were stupid, which is no doubt why they perished.
Homo sapiens, somewhat smarter, are admittedly improved, but a far cry
from perfection. Compared to future human beings, our kind will appear to be
dumb, dumber, and dumbest.
(Exonerating
those who
made so bold as to tamper
with their blueprint?)
Absolutely; in
God’s absence...
(Read
“non-existence".)
...who else
trust? The Ways of Nature surely guarantee survival of the fittest, which, to
date, has meant survival of the cruellest, meanest thugs imaginable. If we’re to
wrest ourselves from ourselves and the violence that sustains us, genes
and proteins
must be quintessentially modified...
(Seig Heil!)
...fundamentally rearranged. And please; whenever talk turns to eugenics,
critics always mention Mein Kamph Adolph as if choosing beneficial traits
sentences those who lack them to wholesale slaughter. We breed cows to give more
milk, ears of corn to produce larger kernels, horses to win the Triple Crown;
we’ve been engineering pets for years; but when it comes to changing human
traits the objections raised grow shrill.
(Wouldn’t
humans be less
human if you robbed
them of free will?)
Indeed they
would be. We define our selves ourselves. Those selves are
violent. We consider this a virtue when directed toward our enemies. For every
vice there seems to exist an extenuating virtue, just as every extenuating
virtue can be compromised by a vice. Normally, we strike a balance, but the
status quo remains; the very
stuff of humanity—that is to say our
genome—passes on our flaws.
(Something like
the way
each child is a clean-slate
having to learn everything
from...?)
Scratch?
Precisely!
Imagine who
we’d be if infants started life where moms and dads left off, already advanced
to their parents' degree so that knowledge was inherited instead of step-by-step
acquired. A child would just progress, advancing Mankind in the process, cradle
to grave to cradle to grave, the race advancing the Race ad infinitum or unto
perfection.
Rockefeller, staggered by this schizophrenic outburst wherein monologue aping
dialogue overshadows common sense (inured to outside censure or inside
moderation), blushes on behalf of his unselfconscious parent—who grimaces,
blinks spasmodically, shrugs with a jerk, his blank expression off kilter, his
wits cocked askance.
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