Tombstone

I was taking my evening constitutional through a well-kept graveyard when I saw, at a distance, the tombstone bearing my name. The Hamilton marker stood there, gaunt and gray, like a foul-smelling intruder loitering at the edge of a convivial garden party, an intruder keeping an eye on someone who owed an impossible debt.

I was already in a somber mood, what with constant news of the pandemic, and my recent heart irregularities, which had led my cardiologist, Brent, to recommend this daily walk. So yes, the tombstone gave me pause. I asked myself, “What am I doing with my life?” and its shadow question: “What should I do with the time remaining?”

By the end of the walk, however, I realized: the tombstone had nothing to do with me. My name is exceedingly common, and I am constantly confused with other David Hamiltons. I returned home, and all thought of the eerie coincidence vanished when my wife, Jeanne, passed along an urgent message regarding a patient whose hand I had repaired earlier that day, a fifth metacarpal fracture, commonly called the “boxer’s fracture.”

The next evening, I ventured closer. “My” tombstone, made of black polished granite, stood among a dozen bearing that surname. A small curved arc on top bore the epitaph, “Loved by all who knew him,” and this irritated me. I suppose clichés are inevitable when it comes to millions of tombstones the world over, but why choose an obvious lie? Who can claim everyone who knew him loved him? Not even Mother Teresa. I know of her—yet I do not love her. Therefore it’s a lie. 

When I got home, Jeanne already had my slippers out and a pot of chamomile tea for us to share. I said, “I think we should start a Society for Truth in Epitaphs.”

“Oh?” She brightened.

“To lobby against slogans like ‘to know him was to love him’,” I said, “and ‘asleep in the arms of Jesus’.”

 She laughed. “Sure, let’s change ‘remembered with love’ to ‘remembered with a faint sense of puzzlement’.”

***

Due to road repair, I couldn’t visit Mount Pleasant cemetery again, not until late fall, when most bushes were bare. I was walking the main circuit, the one around the grand mausoleum, and, with a start, I found myself staring at the gaunt gray intruder again.

At the bottom, the year of birth was visible—and it was the same as mine.

Ah well, I told myself, that’s the curse of the common name. It’s the bane of the internet search. “There are 2300+ professionals named ‘David Hamilton’,” says LinkedIn, and this obviously does not include the forests of family trees that include my name among the ancestors.

Over chamomile tea, I mentioned the odd occurrence to Jeanne. “Ooh, wow,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a deliciously blood-curdling story in this.” She’s an illustrator of kid’s books, and loves to pass along story ideas to her talented clients.

She began humming Twilight Zone theme music. “Of all the thousands of David Hamilton on the internet,” she said in a sepulchral voice, “twenty of whom live in this city, what is the likelihood that one of them shares your year of birth?”

I chuckled. “Perhaps Brent has a new, creative way to remind his patients to keep working on their cardiac health.”

“Hey, did you check the year of death?”

“No, I didn’t. I wasn’t about to climb all over the—”

“Oh come on, surely you checked!”

She knows me too well; I had checked. “Sorry to disappoint,” I said. “It’s not filled in. Lots of dates on tombstones are still open. It’s a, you know, placeholder tombstone.”

“Ah… spooky, someone’s waiting for you….”

She clasped her hands to her warm mug. “Wouldn’t it be odd if it had a year of death five years ago? That would mean I was married to the undead!”

“Oh, stop it, Jeanne!”

She dissolved into giggles.

***

As a young child, I asked my mother, “Who is my father?”

“Zeus,” she answered.

“When can I meet him?”

“Never.”

“Is he dead?”

“No.” She told me she loved Papa, would always love him, and had promised to keep “their arrangement” a secret. “He is a famous man,” she told me, “but you mustn’t go telling anyone else. This is just for you and me to know. Okay?”

As I grew older, I learned my mother, Dorothy Broussard, was “the other woman” in the life of a famous man, someone unable to leave his wife. Dorothy refused to give up her art and her activism.

***

Things got busy at my clinic. The pandemic brought a spate of broken hands: amateurs doing home renos, acrobat-wannabes doing too many handstands, and frustrated Type As smashing their fists into walls (the aforementioned boxer’s fracture). Meanwhile, the new protocols in hospitals were elaborate and time-consuming. When we became extremely short-staffed, all hand surgeries ceased, and I was even seconded into the Covid wards for two weeks, until Brent intervened. “Although the arrhythmia is not so pronounced,” he said, “nonetheless, you have a risk factor.”

So, back to orthopedics, my true passion. Repairing hands is a source of great intellectual satisfaction, like getting to solve a 3-D jigsaw puzzle every day at work. As I scrutinized X-rays and snipped rows of sutures, the notion of the gaunt and gray intruder nibbled at the edge of my consciousness. A new puzzle.

A tombstone, once it is properly in use, does not belong to you, does it? This is contrary to most things—a gift, a knapsack, a university diploma—where having your name on it means it belongs to you.

As a kid, I once found a ball with my name on it. I was shy and unpopular, with all the natural ease of a wind-up toy. My school chums loved soccer so much that the shiny new ball brought me instant popularity, even more so when someone recognized Rinaldo’s autograph on the leather. “Keep playing the beautiful game,” it said.

When Mom saw the new ball, she said, “Oh drat, you found your birthday gift ahead of time.” I could tell it was a fib. For years I harbored the suspicion that Zeus knew I loved soccer and he had covertly left the ball where I would find it.

Why did the soccer ball pop into my head just then? I was supposed to be examining a nondisplaced phalangeal fracture.

***

The ball was not the only instance. Another day, after a lovely thick snowfall, we were all sent home early from school. While digging high and low in the coat closet for my snow boots, I discovered a new violin case with my name on it. Christmas was in the air, and my school orchestra was rehearsing carols. I could hardly wait to try out my new violin. I was convinced my little solo would sound better on the new violin—if only my secretive mother would let me have the new violin. One night I slammed shut the geography text and informed her the gig was up.

“I can’t believe you’d do this,” she cried. “Weeks of lying to my face!”

“How about ‘Santa’,” I countered in my aggrieved twelve-year-old voice. “You’ve been lying to me for years!”

“Oh, pfft, that’s Santa-wink-wink. You’ve known about him since you were five, Davey, and I know you’ve known, and we’ve just pretended to each other.” She smirked. “And didn’t we have fun with our little white lies?”

“Like you’ve pretended my father is Zeus?”

“Exactly. We both know that’s not his real name.”

“Tell me the truth—who is he?”

“I can’t tell you. I promised not to. Remember The Watchman’s Oath?” She named a movie we’d watched together and both loved, a film about a French resistance fighter who stood firm and did not betray his comrades—even while the Nazis crushed his hands, one finger at a time.

***

Blame it on lockdown boredom, but Jeanne would not let the tombstone go. “I don’t get why you’re not more curious about this,” she said over our clamshells of takeout sushi.

“Put it this way,” I said, “Once upon a time I used to Google my name. Ego surfing, remember that? I’ve met a few David Hamiltons in my time, all rather boring.”

“Could one of them be the David Hamilton with the tombstone?” she said.

“Maybe.”

“Or is somebody… bwa-ha-ha-ha… vaiting for you?” She does a very good Bela Lugosi vampire accent.

“You’re letting your imagination run away with you,” I said. “Pass the wasabi, please.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s one exhausted busboy on break between shifts.” I rubbed my eyes. I was the busboy.

“Where there’s smoke, there’s a crrrematorium…bwah-ha-ha-ha… with a pine box on a conveyor crrrreaking toward a rrroaring fire.”

“You are impossible.” I smiled.

She tossed her mane of thick dark hair in a beguiling way. “And ze pine box has your name on it.”

I caught her by the wrists and kissed her. “Mm… Let’s start a fire this weekend.”

***

I may have acted as if the tombstone was nothing, but it did have positive effects. Brent praised my efforts and told me the arrhythmia seemed to have dissipated. “Steady, moderate exercise; good diet—the muscle is responding well.”

Also, I took care of some things left undone. Jeanne and I updated our will. We arranged a Celebration of Life for my mother, who had died early in the pandemic. Third, we set up the Dorothy Broussard Foundation to protect endangered species, the subject of most of her artwork.

***

The voice on the phone sounded old and querulous. I replied that, yes, I was Dr. David Hamilton, orthopedic surgeon, but the caller would have to go through regular channels and have his G.P. send a referral.

“I have just returned from Tenerife,” the man said in his plummy Oxbridge accent. “I do not need your consultation, as excellent as it may be. I am merely replying to a message left by someone named… Jen?”

I felt compelled to show age some respect, but cobwebs hung in my brain. “I’m sorry,” I said, “your name is…?”

“Basil David Hamilton. I am calling about the Dorothy Broussard Foundation.”

My fingers fumbled to grasp a pen.

***

He lived on the entire floor of a swank apartment building nestled in the heart of Forest Hill. A dour housekeeper admitted me and took my coat and shoes. She said, “Sir Basil will see you in the conservatory.”

The hall was hung with striking and original art, as was the music room. It seemed any minute a small orchestra might emerge from behind the velvet burgundy curtains and seat themselves at the grand piano, standing harp, or pick up a violin. “Please do come in,” a familiar voice said.

Across the Turkish carpet I approached him, the man Zeus, as I had thought of him for so long. He sat tall and ancient in his wingback chair, his hair artificially black and glossy. He had several fine lines across his forehead, like a music score, and deep lines around his mouth and glittering eyes. I recognized him immediately as the pre-eminent composer recently knighted for outstanding cultural contributions. Jeanne had briefed me with his complete bio, so I knew Sir Basil’s legal wife had died two years ago, and his polyglot daughter, Erica, was currently overseas working in the diplomatic corps.

The silence grew.

I am no stranger to persons of great wealth, talent, or renown. We usually have a hand injury talk about, an icebreaker, if you will. I wished Jeanne had come along, to ease the conversation, but she had refused. “This is your Luke-meets-Darth-Vader moment,” she’d said. “Time to go mano a mano.” Her words made me uneasy, as if a confrontation was expected. A showdown. But where was the wrong? My mother had wanted to be out of the limelight. Sir Basil had consented to give me his surname—thus, acknowledging me as his own. And now, what, this stranger thought he could make up for lost time, welcome me into the fold, and “allow” me to rest my bones in the family plot?

For that’s what the tombstone was, I had concluded: it was to mark my final resting place. It was a peace offering of sorts; it was to be a “gathering in” of the illustrious life of Sir Basil David Hamilton, a place where eventually he would be surrounded by distinguished forebears and extended family and, yes, even me, the lovechild who made good.

The silence grew and my mind raced. I looked at a nearby painting, an early Kandinsky, and tried to come up with an opener.

“Your mother, Dorothy Broussard, was a captivating woman,” Sir Basil ventured. “I still recall the first time we met…” His thoughts seemed to drift.

This time, I let the silence grow. What were the attributes he had fixated upon? I waited to hear accolades of her beauty, her charm, her gift of sociability. Instead, the housekeeper wheeled in a clattering drinks cart and Sir Basil invited me to “choose my poison.”

“Regarding Dorothy’s foundation,” he said gravely, “May I donate valuable articles for auction?”

I said, “Of course.” To the housekeeper, I said, “green tea, please.”

“Green tea! My word, you are the epitome of moderation,” he said. “Come closer, where I can see you better…. I have long wanted to meet you. I used to receive updates from your mother. Your precocious reading … your MVP trophies in soccer… and your musical talent. However, I was dismayed to hear of your bout with mononucleosis… and your arrest for public mischief.”

I reddened, remembering how Mom tore a strip off me for that.

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” he chortled. “Simply wayward youth. You see, I was young once too. Sometimes… a man needs to test the limits.”

Great, I thought, where was the loving forgiveness when I most needed it?

“I have a son, too, you know,” he continued. “Although he would never have such escapades.”

I was stunned. Jeanne hadn’t mentioned a son. Had I missed it in the bio she’d prepared?

“Yes, born the same year. Your half-brother.”

“I’m sorry, I’m a little confused,” I said, holding up my hand against the onslaught of sonorous pronouncements, like interrupting David Attenborough reading through a script. “You have another son? I’ve never heard of him. Your daughter, yes; Erica’s rumored to be the next Kissinger. But a son?”

A tremor passed over Sir Basil’s face, a brief change of expression somewhere between repugnance and regret. “He’s institutionalized. Has been from very early on. We tried caring for him at home, but he was born severely compromised. Furthermore, Audrey was having… issues. And then, complications arose.”

The housekeeper handed us each a thick yunomi cup of green tea.

“Independently, two mothers came up with the same name for their little boys. Who was I to disagree?” Sir Basil said. “When a woman risks her life to bear a child, I don’t have the moral authority to reject the name she chooses.”

“So, Nebuchadnezzar is okay?” I couldn’t resist.

He blew on his tea. “Ha ha, you’re argumentative, too, I see.” He smiled, dare I say, somewhat fondly.

“So you kept the existence of this other David Hamilton a secret,” I said.

“Please understand. We didn’t keep it that way; there was no conscious action on our part. It just never made the news, and for Audrey, after a series of miscarriages, it was better that way.” His eyes flickered to a photo on the mantel. “She felt like an utter failure. Motherhood was her goal—she liked to say she dreamed of ‘a quartet of our own’—and she wasn’t happy until a healthy baby was born.”

“And your David Hamilton is still alive?” I was seized with an urge to meet him.

“Alas, no. He lives—lived, excuse me—in a group home. Hard hit by Covid. He died some months ago.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” I muttered, almost from reflex.

“I’ve made space for him in the family plot. The tombstone requires updating but… supply-chain issue for the drill bits of their engraving tool. Apparently.”

He looked again at Audrey’s photo, and I stared into my cup, feeling the warmth radiate into my hand. Carpal bones, metacarpal bones, phalanges…

“Tell me, do you still play violin?” he asked, one black eyebrow raised. “I thought…perhaps…,” he said awkwardly, gesturing toward a music stand.

I play regularly, to keep my surgeon’s hands limber. But I hesitated from sharing that with him. Somehow, for all the years he was closed off from me, from us, I couldn’t pretend this was a Hallmark reunion.

He misread the doubt on my face, and instead launched himself from the wingback chair and walked, a trifle unsteadily, to the piano, where he played the first bars of a Vivaldi piano-violin duet. One that I loved, and had labored a long time to learn.

“Thank you for the tea,” I said, rising. “I must go.”

As I walked away, the music halted. Then I heard Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor.

THE END