My Mysterious Uncle Max

Who knows what crimes or dark deeds my black-sheep Uncle Max had committed that made made him such a pariah in our o-so-respectable family, but they must have been something awful. Although he was my father's older brother, his name was never mentioned except with embarrassment or distaste.

Inasmuch as I'm now the "patriarch," it's time to get the family stuff on the record for the benefit of the kids, the grandkids, and the extended mishpucha. So here's all I know about my mysterious uncle. Spoiler alert: it doesn't add up to villainy.

Max was the oldest of the four (Sol, Mollie, and Mannie succeeded him). He would have been born about 1895, just about the time the family escaped the Ukraine for the Lower East Side. He studied at Albany State Teachers College for a while, but I don't think he earned a degree. He lived in Paris during the 1920s and perhaps 1930s. He was invited to but did not attend my parents' wedding. He was divorced (a source of immeasurable shame in those years). My mother said, "Uncle Max is very selfish." There was something shady about the way he made his living, but I don't know the details, except that, for a while, he ghost-wrote doctoral dissertations. He lived with a woman to whom he wasn't married. He died of a heart attack during the 1950s. 

I met him three times. Once, he came to a family gathering, My father wouldn't speak to him. Another time he paid a weekday afternoon call to our East 9 Street home. I found him in the kitchen talking with my mother: "This is your Uncle Max." And then, when I was thirteen, he called and asked if he could take me to the finals of the NCAA basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden. After a lot of discussion and negotiation, I was allowed to meet him at the arena. Max was a small man, hard of hearing, and very ordinary.  He tried hard to be congenial. He told me that he had taken "Robert" as a middle name. Frankly, he seemed no more menacing or odd than any other of my uncle-ry or than other men of his generation. What else do I remember of that evening?  During the game, an errant pass hit off a player's head and bounced into the basket.

I never saw Max again.

And yet my father once confessed to me that he told Max that "if he ever did that again, I'd kill him." My father, mildest of men, threatened someone with violent death?  Because he did what?  Dad wouldn't say.

Here's a spooky story, and I'm going to tell it exactly the way it happened, no embroidery or exaggeration. On the night of my father's funeral, my brothers and I and our wives gathered around the formica kitchen table in the old house. Uncle Max's name came up. I said, "I know the name of the woman who he lived with." "What is it?"  "It's Sarah Clyne, spelled with a C and a Y." There was a Manhattan telephone book (five inches thick and at least two thousand pages). I picked up the book and it fell open. I put my finger on a name. The name was Sarah Clyne. "I said, did you see what happened?  I just opened the book at random and my finger fell on the name Sarah Clyne, Max's lady. It seems like a sign that I should call her."

But I didn't.

Here's the only picture of Max of which I have knowledge. He's with "little grandma." The picture is taken in front of 334 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.

Comments

[Don Z. Block]

You probably need to do more research about this guy. Mysteries are fun as long as they are solved. If you can't discover what he did that made your father violently homocidal, make it up. Did he always dress up? What else is known about Sarah Clyne? Can there be a rational explanation that would explain why the phone book opened up to her name? Is it possible that members of your family frequently called Sarah to find out what Max was up to? Did she have kids who have more info about Max? Why choose "Robert" as a middle name? Was he a big basketball fan? Do you recall how many teams played in the NCAA back in the 50s, and which two you saw play? Did Max make any interesting comments about the game? On that second visit, why was Max talking to your mother? Why was he there at all? There is a biography or a novel here.