Before My Life Began (21 page)

I was eleven years old and I was leading him by the hand. He had a white patch over his good eye. They had called me to the principal's office at school and told me that I was to take the subway to the Lower East Side, where he was waiting for me at Gordon's. While he was tying packages, a piece of twine had whipped up and scratched his good eye. My mother telephoned to say she was too ill to travel. The principal gave me a nickel for the subway, asked if I felt brave enough to make the journey myself.

My father sat on a stool in a corner of the store, near racks of dark winter coats. When I spoke to him he beamed. He touched my face with his fingertips so that, in front of the other men, I felt embarrassed. I wrapped his eyeglasses in tissue, then in brown wrapping paper. On the subway platform I was terrified that he would fall over the edge in front of an oncoming train. In the train I was terrified that I would get through the doors and that they would snap closed behind me with him still in the subway car, grinning, feeling the door with blind fingers. On the street I kept urging him to stay close to me, to hold my hand, and I was afraid he would trip and fall, that I would fall with him and smash his glasses. Yet all the while I led him home he was quiet and obedient. With a son like mine, he said to the men at Gordon's, who needs eyes?

In our apartment my mother kissed me and laughed at my father, at the way he groped and stumbled from room to room. Was there a difference, she wanted to know? Was there a difference between when he was blind and when he could see?

He kept the patch on his eye for twelve days. He learned to dress himself and to wash himself and to make himself sandwiches. He learned to shave himself while I told him where he had missed spots, where he had nicked himself.

“Hey Davey—wait up.”

It was Tony. He put his arm around my shoulder and I didn't shrug it off.

I'm sorry.

“Thanks.”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm okay.”

“Goldstein was a real asshole, giving us all that Holy Joe shit about you and your father. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think he's glad. I think he's glad he got an excuse to bump you off the team.”

“He can't.”

“I know. You're gonna play, right?”

“Right.”

He pounded me on the back and we walked together without saying anything to each other for a while.

“What are you going to do about college?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“I heard you got an offer.”

“Oh yeah, they been sucking around my ass—these small Catholic places in Upstate New York, and one in Pennsylvania—but I don't know. I mean, I don't
know.”

“You should go to college.”

“Tell you what—you help me see that my old man follows yours, so we'll be even, and then you and me, we make a deal, right? We tell these colleges we're a team—Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside, like Davis and Blanchard were for Army, remember?—and that they got to give us a package deal. The Kids from Brooklyn, right? The Gold-Dust Twins, like Reese and Reiser. Shit, they'll pack in the fans and please all the Wops and Hebes and get two aces for the price of one.”

I smiled.

“There you go, hey! I was waiting for that, to make sure you were still alive inside that ice chest you got on your shoulders.”

“I'm alive.”

“I'm glad you're gonna play in the game. Life goes on. I mean, that's what I think, don't you? That life goes on, no matter what.”

“I suppose.”

“Does it hurt, though, that he's gone?”

“Some.”

“Where does it hurt most, can you tell?”

“No.”

“You really think I should go to college? That I got the brains?”

“Yes.”

We were at the corner of Rogers and Church, where the trolley conductors and switchmen and supervisors were huddled together in front of Dominick's Barber Shop, going over their bets.

“I've been trying to imagine what it would be like to lose my old man,” Tony said, “and I came to the conclusion that the difference is I don't really give a shit about mine, and I think you loved yours. Your old man ain't
mean
the way mine is. That makes a difference, even with drips. About college, though, I don't know. If I went off somewhere instead of following in my famous brothers' footsteps, he wouldn't think twice about getting out a small contract on me.”

“You should go to college.”

“Are you angry with me for following you, for talking so much?”

“Not really.”

“Your uncle say anything to you about us going down to Coney?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah. They gave me a hard time too. But don't you think if things were different with our old men—our families—that I'd want to hang out with you more the way we did in the old days? Don't you know I'd do it if I thought it wouldn't get us into worse trouble than we're in already?”

“I suppose.”

“I suppose. Yeah. Only it takes two to be enemies the same way it takes two for friends is the way I look at it. You've always been free to be my friend too.”

“Why don't you just get lost for a while, okay?”

“Nah. I figure you need somebody like me to get mad at now. It'll do you good. Death
should
piss you off. Hey listen—you want Regina to fix you up with somebody else tonight? Hey Davey, the broad'll ask—how'd the day go? Get it? How'd the Da-go?”

“Get lost, Tony. I mean it. I'm not in the mood.”

“Ah, if you're so pissed at me, how come I see you starting to smile?”

“Fuck off.”

“Listen, though: what I wanted to say was that I figured the only hope for me, if I do what you say and go to college someday, is to take on some new name like all the college players do for the summer up in the Catskills, playing for hotels. Grow a mustache maybe. Put on some weight. Tell people I'm a Jew, that you and me are cousins or that I ain't got no mother and father, that I grew up in an orphanage, raised by rabbis. I mean, I got the nose, right? I got—”

“I think I want to be alone. Really.”

“Sure thing,” he said, and he was moving away even as he said it, past the London Hut, up Church Avenue toward Nostrand. He called back to me: “You stick to it, Davey. You stick to it and play if you want and don't let anybody tell you different, you hear? And you know what else?”

“What?”

“I'll see you in the Garden on Thursday. We'll cream those guys, you and me, Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. Impress the hell out of all the scouts too.”

He waved and moved off. I walked along Rogers Avenue, realized that pictures were coming more swiftly, easily. I saw my father going down the staircase by himself. I saw him walking along the street, tapping a cane to the left and right in a semicircle. He said hello to people, guessed their names from their voices. The patch was gone. The sun was bright. We were in the courtyard together having a catch. I was eleven years old. He held my hand and showed me how to throw a curve ball, how to snap my wrist down and out at the last instant.

My father was leaving the apartment, wearing his good black coat, his air-raid warden's hat. I crouched beside the kitchen window, my ear to the wall. I lifted the black window shade and watched until I saw him walking by himself along our street three stories below. If German Messerschmitts and Stukas got through our radar and attacked New York, would he get back before we were hit?

I saw us on my bed playing blackjack for pennies. I saw him sitting in my room, hour after hour, smoking and daydreaming while I worked on my drawings. I saw him waiting for me outside the gym, and how surprised I was, walking home with him, to realize that I often thought of myself as being older than him, of him being my younger brother.

I felt less angry. Would Tony be angry with me, though, because I hadn't wanted to talk with him, to let him be with me?

With a son like mine who needs eyes
.

Abe's black Buick Roadmaster was parked in front of my building, Turkish Sammy in the driver's seat, working at his teeth with a silver toothpick. Waxey Shreibman and Lefty Kolatch huddled under the arcade. When they spotted me, they started pacing back and forth, flapping their arms against their sides to keep warm. Lefty held the door open for me.

“Sorry, kid,” he said. “I liked your old man a lot.”

“Yeah,” Waxey said. “He was a terrific little guy.”

I waited in the lobby. I didn't want to be angry when I entered the apartment. Could I know what my mother was feeling now? Could I ever know all that she and my father had been through, all that they had truly felt for one another? I walked up the stairs. I wondered if Beau Jack knew about my father. I opened the door and the warm air hit me as if it were a wall. The living room was already packed with people, but I tried not to see them. I stood just inside the door, closed it softly. My mother was moving across the living room, eyes red, cheeks flushed, and the instant I saw her she looked my way. I set down my gym bag and moved toward her.

“Oh David!”

She came to me and I felt almost happy suddenly, to feel warm air swell inside me, to feel tears beginning to well in my eyes.

“Oh mother!” I said. “I'm so sorry. I'm just so sorry….”

I wanted to take her to me, to comfort her and to be comforted, to kiss her and to feel her kisses and tears all over my face, to shut out the rest of the world and to talk for hours about him, about how we would miss him, about all the things we remembered! She smiled at me, her eyes shining, so happy to see me that it made my heart lurch. And then, as she came to me and as I put my arms out for her, she suddenly changed her mind. She shot out her right hand, toward my chest, and pushed me back.

“Not now,” she said “I've already cried enough already today, believe me. Not now. But come. I want you to meet people. We've been waiting for you.”

I stood there and stared at her hand—I imagined a policeman's gloved hand holding up traffic for schoolchildren—and I could actually feel the tears recede, drain down the back of my throat. She led me to the kitchen. Lillian and Sheila were setting out fruit and nuts and crackers and pretzels in bowls. They kissed me. Sheila held to me for a long time. She said that my father was her favorite uncle, that on the day that Abe went overseas he came to their apartment and said to her that as long as Abe was gone he would try to be a second father to her. She said he was a man who never hurt anybody in his entire life. Lillian said that my father was always ready with a smile and a joke, that he had a good sense of humor and a sunny disposition.

They left. My mother stood close to me, drew in on a cigarette.

“Listen. What I wanted you to know before we go into the other room is that Sol's brothers are here already, see? God bless Abe for taking care of things, but Sol's brothers—listen—you don't trust them for a second, do you hear? They'll try to get you alone and work on your guilt and make you change all the plans. I know them.” She blew smoke toward the ceiling. “You know what they wanted me to do, first thing? They wanted me to call the hospital and have your father's body shipped back here so they could wash it and clean it on the kitchen table. Can you believe it? And here”—she took a small brown box from the top of the refrigerator—“do you know what's inside this? Do you?”

“No.”

“Dirt! That's what! The first thing they do when they get here is they hand me a box of dirt. No kiss, no hello, no I'm sorry, no nothing—just barge in and hand me a box of dirt. From the Holy Land, they say. From Israel! And I shouldn't forget to bury the dirt with Sol.”

“Are you all right?”

“How should I know? I mean, do I know what I'm doing? Do I know what I'm feeling?”

I tried again to put my arms around her, but she moved away, set the box back on the refrigerator, extinguished her cigarette under the faucet. She held up the wet stub.

“So you tell me why I'm smoking these crappy Chesterfields. Because I want to smell like your father, so he won't go away so fast?” She laughed and then, her mouth wide open—I thought of the car trunk, the bodies on the ground—she shoved the back of her hand in. “Oh Davey! I lost my best friend, did you know that? I lost my best friend!” She came close again. “But just you be smart and promise me not to get into any arguments with his brothers, yeah? I don't want no trouble. You just agree with whatever they say and let Abe take care of the rest. Orthodox Jews are all nuts. Listen. Abe insisted I call. A brother's a brother, he said. Death is death. Who can tell?”

“But are you all
right
, mother? You seem so—”

“Whenever Abe gets near them—you watch—it makes me want to laugh the way they kind of slide around the room to get away from him. Come.”

In the living room, people crowded around me, told me how sorry they were, what a wonderful man my father was. Stevey Komisarik shook my hand, recited words I didn't hear. Was he thinking of the game, wondering if I'd play, hoping I wouldn't? Was Tony at home, having to take shit from his brothers, or was he with Regina? Everyone was eating or smoking or talking. How had they arrived so soon? And why did they act as if they were at a party? My mother introduced me to Sol's brothers and gave me their names. Manny and Harry. They looked like twins. They wore black coats and black hats and had thick dark beards that covered their throats in wild curls. My mother said she hadn't seen them since she got married but whose fault was that? Avie Gornik cupped his hand to my ear and whispered: “The original Smith Brothers, right, kid? Like on the cough drops.”

I shrugged him off. I stared at my uncles, trying to figure out how it could be that these two small men had played with my father when he was a boy, had slept in the same bed with him. In the wintertime, my father had told me, when they took him sledding, they smeared goose fat on his ears. They wore thick rimless glasses. Behind the glasses their eyes were small, like black beads covered with gray film. Their cheeks were pink, as if rouged. They held little black books in their hands, index fingers wedged inside, and they looked at me as if they were appraising merchandise.