Gil Christopher

By Rod Lee

Book synopsis:

Gil Christopher is the story of a man in his mid to late seventies who is dealing with the challenges of aging. Gil has always been thought of as young at heart by family and friends but now life has gotten d

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Branding LLC
• Release date: Apr 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781639456437

Book preview

Introduction

Years ago, by sheer coincidence, I came across W. Somerset Maugham’s The Summing Up , a book bound in a hard brown cover and consisting of three hundred and ten yellowed but otherwise undamaged pages.

Published in 1938 by The Literary Guild of America and printed at the Country Life Press in Garden City, N.Y., the book cost me only four dollars and ninety-eight cents; this, while I still had money in my pocket, before retirement and something akin to near-insolvency.

The Summing Up became one of my prized possessions, adding to a personal library of several hundred books, including a number of first editions. Maugham’s book is not identified on the copyright page as holding that distinction but neither is there any indication that it is not an original copy.

There is no dust jacket, which prompted me to wonder if there ever was one.

The title of the book and the name W. Somerset Maugham are embossed in gold lettering on the spine.

This book might be one of the most valuable of all those I own, I thought at the time. There can’t be many like it, in almost pristine condition, lying around.

Holding the book in my hands, I could picture Maugham as I’d seen photographs of him in old age: his face lined with deep crevices and cracks, like the rocky side of a mountain, or the furrows that are left after tilling. His expression regal, and impervious to the opinion of others. I have always thought of him as somewhat aloof.

An English playwright, novelist and short-story writer, Maugham is little known today. He died in 1965 at the age of ninety-one: the very same plateau a man I know—John Cuckoo Martinelli—attained in August of 2021. Asked recently by one of a half dozen men who wait outside the local dollar store for their morning newspaper how old are you, John? Cuckoo replied ninety-one. My sister Rita is ninety-nine. She takes eighteen pills a day, six in the morning, six at noon at six at suppertime.

John Martinelli (not his real name) appears as a character in Gil Christopher.

Cuckoo’s life bears little resemblance to that of the author of such works as Of Human Bondage and The Moon and Sixpence. Cuckoo’s, so near as I can tell, has involved almost continuous physical exertion, Maugham’s little that would qualify as especially straining.

The fourth of six sons, Maugham was orphaned early. Both of his parents died before he was ten. He was raised by a paternal uncle. Approaching adulthood, he spurned the law and medicine for a career as a writer.

He remains one of the literary world’s most captivating figures. Burdened by a lifelong stammer, he saddled his famous character Philip Carey with a corresponding infirmity—a clubfoot. Married for thirteen years, Maugham fathered a daughter but denied paternity. Of the homosexuality he finally embraced wholeheartedly, he said I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer—whereas really it was the other way around.

He did not believe in God. He worked in Intelligence as a spy. His home on the French Rivera became one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 1930s.

He has no grave. His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library of the King’s School in Canterbury.

The Summing Up is as fascinating a read as W. Somerset Maugham is a character. This is not an autobiography nor is it a book of recollections, he writes in the opening sentence. True to this declaration, it is instead a compilation of the author’s unapologetic philosophic thoughts on beauty, good and evil, religion, success, human nature, creativity, and other topics.

Much later, in addressing his atheism, he says with my mind at all events I ceased to believe in God; I felt the exhilaration of a new freedom. But we do not believe only with our minds; in some deep recess of my soul there lingered still the old dread of hell-fire, and for long my exultation was tempered by the shadow of that ancestral anxiety. I no longer believed in God; I still, in my bones, believed in the Devil.

I have experienced my own struggles with faith. More precisely, with organized religion. I have seen too much hypocrisy, too much phoniness and too much sanctimonious behavior from those who think of themselves as singularly devout followers of Christ to accept the premise that they—and their spokespersons—know best.

Raised a Baptist, I am no longer a regular churchgoer.

I try to stay committed to the lessons and principles passed along to me by my maternal grandmother, and I dip in and out of the Bible. I know I should spend more time with the Scriptures than with Emerson, Thoreau, Mencken and other prominent thinkers, but there you have it.

Like Somerset Maugham, I have reached that point in my life at which it seems appropriate to render some sort of summary of where things stand, if you will. It is impossible to do so without taking into account the many burdens that come with being elderly—although I am reluctant to think of myself that way.

I had been thinking for a while of putting into context what it is like for a man in his mid-to-late seventies to wrestle with the demands placed on him when he is increasingly ill-equipped to deal with them.

Gil Christopher is that person, an individual who remembers his long ago youth with affection even as he tries to make sense of the mystifying issues and problems that go hand-in-hand with old age.

This is his story.

—R.L.

Northbridge, Massachusetts

January, 2023

ONE

Magnolia cones

In his seventy-fifth year and with October and another birthday fast approaching, Gil Christopher saw the magnolia cones covering the brick walk and driveway in front of the house as the latest reminder of what he was up against in trying to manage a life that seemed to have slipped from his grasp.

How is it possible to have reached this age and be at the mercy of forces that constantly thwart my best intentions? he asked himself. "I should be content. I shouldn’t have to worry about anything other than whether the recliner is going to break and need to be fixed.

I have never felt so frustrated.

The sight of the magnolia cones put him in an ugly mood. He would sweep them away with the push broom he kept on the porch but they would be there just as thick the next day and when he left to buy the morning newspaper they would crunch under his feet and he would hear himself say oops—as if he was violating their space, not them his. Or he would mutter oh no, like Ralphie in the movie when he steps on his eyeglasses in the snow.

It had not always been this hard. It had in fact once been easy.

Gil often reflected on the golden days of his youth, when anything, physically, was possible. He was not sure when this domination of his environment, this invincibility, changed, only that now the slightest exertion—a bend, a crouch, a sudden twist of the hips when he raked leaves—left him reaching for the Tylenol.

Even getting out of bed had become an ordeal.

In the neighborhood of yesteryear, back in Endicott, he was the best athlete on the street. Not the most naturally gifted, biggest, strongest or tallest, but the one younger kids looked up to for abilities that appeared to them to be extraordinary. He could hit. He could throw. He could catch. He could run. He could drain shots from twenty-five, thirty feet away.

That much of his prowess came from an insatiable appetite for sport and not from an abundance of talent was not at that moment apparent to him. He reveled in the prospect that he was destined for the cover of Sports Illustrated. There was no reason to believe this wouldn’t happen.

I want to be Gil Christopher, seven and eight-year-olds would say. They were in awe of the skills he demonstrated in the backyards of homes near his, on the sandlot behind the elementary school, in the gym. He let the accolades wash over him and he waited for the next affirmation of his greatness that they were always so willing to deliver.

He heard the words they spoke, I want to be that good, and he smiled.

II

He was born with blue eyes and blond hair and an accommodating, positive personality and so had these attributes working in his behalf as well—no small consideration. This, and he was the first of four boys—no girls—which meant that his parents subordinated their wants to his every need and wish. He lacked for nothing, even though his father, a framing carpenter, and his mother, a homemaker and part-time bookkeeper and secretary, struggled, financially. It didn’t matter. They dipped into their wallets to provide him with everything his adolescent heart desired: clothing, a bicycle, a Y.A. Tittle-autographed football, a Spaulding mitt, a hoop over the garage, model airplanes and model ships, golf clubs, and a generous allowance. He used his weekly stipend to buy 45 RPM records, candy, movie tickets, root-beer floats, and hot fudge sundaes at the local ice cream parlor where he and his friends hung out.

It was the 1950s.

Gil Christopher was the all-American boy.

It didn’t occur to him that life would be any different for a child growing up in Buffalo or Cleveland or Baton Rouge or Sacramento. For the most part other locales didn’t even exist for him anyway. He seldom ventured beyond the bounds of the village—a middle-class community of approximately 15,000 residents situated two hundred miles north of New York City that was still basking in the glory that George F. Johnson the benevolent shoe-making magnate had left behind.

Endicott, in the so-called Valley of Opportunity, in Broome County, afforded Gil every chance to excel.

His was a perfectly ordered life. He was enveloped in the arms of a family that included his mother and father, brothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, all of whom showered him with love and encouragement. From the games of cowboys and Indians and cops and robbers and hide-and-seek and sandlot scrimmages and half-court three-on-three’s that filled his formative years with joy he had graduated at fifteen to a position on the freshmen basketball team at Jennie F. Snapp with a clear vision of what lay ahead.

He was unstoppable.

He would be scoring thirty points a night in The Pit and reading about his exploits in the newspaper the next day.

He would be the next Johnny Logan, swatting home runs that landed with a splash in the Susquehanna, just as the shortstop for the Milwaukee Braves had done, growing up in Endicott.

He would suit up as starting halfback or maybe even starting quarterback for the new coach in town, a man named Fran Angeline, for whom winning was second only in importance to breathing.

Angeline was just a few years out of Colgate. He was The Prodigal Son, back to claim his rightful place in the illustrious history of a manufacturing village.

III

Sitting in the concrete bleachers at Ty Cobb Stadium on a Saturday afternoon in September of 1959, watching the Tigers spread out in formation in their imposing Orange and Black, Gil turned and said to his best friend Bill Thayer I’m going to play for that man someday.

Bill Thayer smiled and nodded but Gil could detect doubt in his voice.

Okay, buddy, whatever you say.

Bill knew that Gil’s knees were already shot, that he’d been having fluid buildup drained every week or so by a doctor on Washington Ave. He also knew that Gil had been relegated to a few minutes’ action with the rest of the scrubs at the end of the frosh basketballers’ games. He knew that Tom Giordano, son of the doctor, not Gil, was the up-and-comer on that squad.

If he’d been pressed, Gil would have said the same thing. He recognized, instinctively, that Tommy Giordano was a natural. He’d seen Tommy in action often enough to develop a jealous appreciation for his superior abilities, how quickly and effortlessly he was able to master the art of dodging would be tacklers in pickup games in the field behind his house. How fluidly he swung the bat. How deftly he dribbled and passed and shot a basketball.

Gil considered himself fortunate to call both Bill and Tommy friends. In Bill Thayer he had a comrade of high intelligence, a National Honor Roll student who overlooked Gil’s own disinterest in subjects like algebra and chemistry and French to accept him as an equal. Bill lived in Glendale, Gil miles away in West Corners, but they had become close in the seventh grade.

It’s a strange thing, Gil mused. "Bill’s inner circle includes some of the Class of ’63’s sharpest intellects and yet he enjoys spending time with me, at his house or mine. Odder still, he is comfortable with my crowd, boys and girls alike, even though we would rather be riding the merry-go-round at West Endicott Park or going to watch Godzilla at the Lyric and necking in the balcony than confining ourselves to our bedrooms to pour over Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or Newton’s Law of Gravity—like Bill does.

The only thing Bill and I have in common is our love for U-E sports teams.

Like Bill Thayer, Tommy Giordano provided Gil with an acceptability—a sheen even—that he would otherwise not have been able to lay claim to. Gil was keenly aware of Tommy’s winning combination of brains and brawn, but also the limited amount of play time he was allowed—so starkly different from the carte blanche opportunities Gil’s parents gave him to roam.

Dr. and Mrs. Giordano kept Tommy and his older brother Vince under tight wraps. When Tommy was summoned from the Giordano’s expansive backyard to the rear door of their large white stucco-sided house opposite a postage stamp-sized body of water known simply as The Pond, he was expected to report without hesitation. He might be in the middle of an at-bat on the makeshift diamond that had been set up for the private use of himself and his friends, or playing H-O-R-S-E or Around the World on the cement court set in the woods farther back. When Mrs. Giordano, like Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Polly, called for him, Tommy would drop what he was doing, say see you later, and dart away.

This meant the end of the games at the Giordano residence. Everyone had to leave. Tommy was inside and not coming back out of the house. Gil could not help but feel shunned—rejected—knowing that, without Tommy on the grounds, he, Gil Christopher, did not count for much. He would ask himself why can’t the rest of us keep our game going? What’s the big deal. It’s not as if we’re trespassing.

That Bill Thayer and Tommy Giordano were not always available when Gil needed them made them seem that much more vital to him.

Gil had an inkling even then that Bill Thayer would finish in the top one percent of the class; and that Tommy Giordano would earn varsity letters in basketball and track and field and go on to become a pharmacist.

As for himself, he wasn’t so sure.

IV

Now here was Fran Angeline, a firebrand who had been tapped as successor to a legend (no, not that Ty Cobb).

A whole community—IBM’ers, EJ’ers, educators, construction workers, cab drivers, truckers, supermarket managers, priests, doctors, nurses, Fred Zappia at the sporting good store on The Avenue—was counting on Angeline to make the letters UEHS known far and wide.

The two of them had gotten used to watching Coach Angeline prowl the sidelines with fire in