Chains Around the Grass (22 page)

It came to her in an epiphany of understanding:

The earth was so lovely! Wondrous! The burning gold sun on the water, the dazzling white of the clouds, the rich blue of the sky! What riches! Perfect in every way, nothing missing, nothing needed. Perfect! And I am part of it. Here with it. I, too, am perfect.

She lay down in the sand. First, she wiggled her toes, feeling the air pass through them like the cold touch of metal. She felt a sudden strong consciousness of her ankles and the firm muscles of her calves, the long wonderful stretch of skin, so smooth and soft, that ran from her toes to the beginning of her hips. She felt aware of her stomach and the softly beating heart in her chest and her mouth and nose and eyes and ears.

Perfect! Perfectly good, with no pain, not a scratch!

A nameless joy began to rise inside her, wavelike. She felt it spread, as a wave breaks and spreads, touching the far-off shore, flooding the sand in a quick, deliberate flood. A sudden, searing light, like the sun, pierced what had been dark and cold and filled with fear.

“I’m alive!” she thought, and was comforted.

Chapter twenty

The summer he turned sixteen, Jesse didn’t spend more than a few hours a day at home during waking hours. His mother kept trying, with all her ridiculously transparent little hints, to find out where the hell he was. (He could tell she was worried about drinking or dirty movies or maybe she even saw him walking into stores and stuffing things into his pockets…!) Sometimes he thought it would actually have been a relief to her if he showed up at the door handcuffed to some cop who would reveal to her, at long last, all his criminal exploits. At least then she’d feel included in his life, even if her only role was to forgive and forget. She had no idea how way off she was.

He stretched his legs. He was already over six feet tall and still (his always too short pants reassured him) growing. His soft, childishly handsome face had grown leaner, harder. His large dark eyes, once filled with curiosity and amusement, now peered out with a wariness that he knew made people a bit uncomfortable—particularly teachers and other adults worth shit determined to favor him with their philosophy and worldview. When he declined the honor, he knew they took their revenge in his grades. Often, he studied himself in the mirror, curious at what so infuriated these little men and women.

He couldn’t find it. What he saw was a dead ringer for Jimmy Dean, with the olive complexion and dark eyes of an Arab.

He wasn’t wrong. What would his mother say if she knew the truth? If she knew that for the last two years he had spent his summers and many of his hours after school in the same exact spot: the business and commerce section of the Queens public library?

He lingered in the cool shadows of the books, knowing that the only thing waiting for him outside was summer’s harsh, scalding light; and knowing too, that between himself and success lay the useless but inevitable shouting-crying-handwringing scene with his mother. And that it was all he was likely to get in the way of immediate reward for all his brilliance, initiative, and hard work.

Geniuses always had to suffer, he comforted himself, as he had no doubt his biographer would one day put it:

In August of 1959, Jesse Marks, barely sixteen, finished a program of self-education in export-import procedures and decided to form his own company. Success came swiftly to the brilliant young businessman who made his first million before the age of seventeen. One of the first of his many generous acts was to move his family from a low-income housing project to an exclusive and spacious home in Woodhurst. From then on, there could be no doubt as to his rare genius for business dealings…

He saw the old geezer he had been sitting next to push up his glasses and stare and realized he must have been speaking out loud.

Embarrassed, he moved toward the exit but couldn’t bring himself to actually go outside. The library, despite the old bags and geezers with their swishing newspapers, had become a sanctuary. Cool, dark, church-like, the manuals and statistics and laws had become his prayer books.

He turned the book in his hand over to look at the loan card and the date he had first taken it out: August 15, 1956. His birthday. The year after his Bar Mitzvah. His Bar Mitzvah. He clenched his fingers, cracking the knuckles. They had all been there. Morris, his stuck-up daughters, uncles, aunts and cousins. Pushing his mother around, telling her what to do. And she had taken it, the way she always took it, damn it! All humble and thankful enough to make you puke! And they had all been at him with their unasked-for advice, their brilliant plans: Oh, they all had fuckin’ plans for him all right. But not, he had noticed, the same plans they had for their own kids. How come Morris hadn’t told his daughters about the wonderful opportunity of vocational training and the forty-buck-a-week job in

a union factory? No. Those two were both in college. What a total shmuck he’d been! Listening to any of them! Taking them seriously…! Rich relatives.

He gripped the table edge. Old newspapers.

He remembered the women who had opened their doors to him in their small houses by the bay, their heads full of pink curlers, their small suspicious eyes like two dark lumps in a bloated sea of flesh, their “whaddaya want?” And then their laughter when they found out he wanted newspapers, old newspapers. The weeks of canvassing after school, his room dark with the stacks, acrid with the smell of dust and moist decay. The trekking with shopping carts to the junkyards to bring the papers by the ton. And each time his feet and back began to ache, being pushed forward by the image of his mother’s joyful surprise as he handed her piles of money.

He had wanted to help her. “Help your mother!” Everyone had demanded it of him at the funeral, during the shiva. His mother, not saying anything, just leaning on him. He’d done his best. He had put his arm around her in the hospital, at the funeral, helping her to walk and not to fall.

Why then—he thought for the millionth time with that familiar ache of bitterness—did she have to go and call Morris? His lips tightened, thinking of his uncle’s somber, horse-like face, the way he had taken over with his dumb questions, his stinking, dumb “arrangements.” Which funeral home they’d use. Which plot. What Rabbi would officiate. Who they needed to call. How the children would have to be told. Where they would sit shiva. He clenched his fists, digging his nails into his palms. Should’ve…should’ve… But he had just stood there quietly, letting himself be treated like some stupid kid.

And through it all there had been the silent thread of reproach that led back to the man who could no longer defend himself. How did you do such a thing? Go into a dangerous operation without making arrangements beforehand, just in case…? Morris had berated his mother. Why hadn’t insurance been taken out? Why hadn’t anyone thought to protect the family? Making it sound as if he, Morris, could have made it all turn out differently.

What had given him strength to pull the shopping carts loaded with old papers through the streets was simply this: that his mother wouldn’t have to call Morris so often, to accept his stinking twenty bucks—charity given at regular intervals as a constant reproach, a symbol of his victory over the man who had left his family without “arrangements.”

He had been prepared for everything—the fat old ladies by the bay, the heavy cart. But he hadn’t been prepared for the man who had thrown the bundles carelessly on the scale, taken out a wad of bills and carefully peeled off three dollars. Thirty cents a ton. Thank you Mrs. Gelt for your wonderful business advice. And may your Eddie drop dead.

His salvation came one day on the back of a Superman comic book, sandwiched between FABULOUS NEW FORMULA CURES ACNE OVERNIGHT! and SEND IN ONE DOLLAR FOR A HUNDRED DOLLS! It was written mostly in lower case, and had only three exclamation points, impressing him with its seriousness. It said: “Learn The Secrets of Wealthy Men. You too can set up your own profitable business in your spare time! Age unimportant. No Experience necessary.” There was a post office box number. They wanted five dollars.

He’d sent them the money—some precious cash left over from the Bar Mitzvah that he hadn’t blown on model plane kits—and in return had received a thin pamphlet in a brown paper envelope which he slid beneath his pillow and mattress, mortified his money hadn’t purchased something thicker. But as he began to read, he understood that—like the ad said—this was going to be: THE BEST INVESTMENT YOU WILL EVER MAKE!

In the intimate privacy of lamplight, he learned of “worldwide opportunities” to sell well-made American goods to primitive foreigners dying to enjoy them. And it was so easy! All you had to do was look up American companies, write to them, offer them “your talent and ability” as middleman to “broker deals between eager foreigners and American entrepreneurs (he looked that word up: one who organizes, operates and assumes the risk in a business venture in expectation of gaining the profit) eager to trade in a wide variety of American products, from refrigerators to canned goods…” Apparently, “Intelligence, salesmanship and the desire for big profits” were all you needed, the brochure said. “Anyone can do it!”

Of course, it didn’t tell him much else. But looking back, it had been worth the five bucks. It had started him down the road looking up strange words like “letters of credit,” leafing through business magazines and foreign trade journals, all the while enduring the librarian’s watchful eye. The first time he’d asked her for help, she’d lifted her badly drawn, plucked brows and shaken her head, skeptical and amused.

Old bag.

But in the end, she’d been useful, he gave her that. Guided him to the right shelves, the right books. One day I’ll come back here, he thought. Pull up in my limo, give the old girl a thrill.

He left the library, and then ran through the brilliant summer light. He sensed the blood rushing from his heart through his veins, all up and down his strong young arms and legs. He felt shot through with exquisite pain, all his senses heightened; able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, focus with x-ray vision on each small detail of beauty: the rainbow shine of gasoline on a sidewalk, the curve of a girl’s ankle inside a shoe…

His pace slowed, his feet suddenly weighted to the pavement. His mother. Hope she doesn’t screw me up! The important stuff he could do himself. The brainwork. But for the typing, the phone calls, getting a post office box and telex number, establishing letters of credit—she’d have to be his front. He relaxed, confident he could talk her into it. Into anything. She was going to do this for him. She had to.

There was something out there worth having. His uncle didn’t know it existed. His mother didn’t want it. But his father had seen it clearly. He had reached out and almost touched it. Entrepreneur.

He wasn’t going to wait anymore. Whatever the old farts told you about getting a good education, being a nice boy, the bottom line was moolah. If you had it, you were a nic-c-c-c-e boy. Smart. A self-made man. If you didn’t you were a sap, a dropout, a juvenile delinquent.

“Ma,” he would say when he got home, “Wish me a happy birthday. Now I’m going to tell you what I want for a present.” She won’t even look up, I bet, won’t even hear a word. Then he would hit her with it. “Ma! I want you to sign those papers. I’m dropping out of school!”

He decided he would leave all the details about setting up the business for another day.

Chapter twenty-one

On Sunday, Morris took the train from Brooklyn over the bridge to the projects. It was a double-fare zone and an hour and a half ride. But a sister, a widow. What could a man do? He thought again how foolish it was to live so far out, in a double-fare zone. Of course, the rent was reasonable. But low-income projects they had in Brooklyn also. It wasn’t as if the neighborhood was different. It was schvartz now all over, wherever you went.

He didn’t look forward to talking to Jesse. A good talker, but a dreamer that boy. Now he wanted to drop out of school and start his own company! Imagine, a sixteen-year-old. He shook his head, remembering the old newspapers, and then the short-lived work selling greeting and business cards. He’d given him an order for business cards. On it he had put: Morris Siegel, Butcher, Baker and Candlestickmaker. For some reason, the boy had seemed offended.

He felt the candy bars in his pocket. Hershey’s chocolate. Sara and Louis looked forward to it so much, those candy bars. And the dollar he’d give them to buy more sweets. Poor kinderlech. He sighed. What was going to be with Jesse? He could teach him the printing business. Get him into the union. He had no sons. He’d do it willingly.

But would the boy listen to him? What it all came down to was laziness. Who liked to get up early, come home late? But you got a check each week, a pension at the end. You could save for your future, help your family… He thought of his sister and the skin pinched between his brows. Of all the people to have such tzurus. The boy needed a strong hand. He needed someone to teach him to grow up, to have

a little responsibility. He took a deep, bracing, purposeful breath.

The cold walk from the subway made his teeth ache. But who had money for dental bills this month? This month Cynthia’s college tuition came due again. He felt his shoulders slump, growing round as if under a physical weight. He patted himself in a familiar, instinctive gesture, checking for his wallet. He thought of the twentyfive dollars he had set aside for his sister Ruth. How many hours of working the machine did it take him to earn twenty-five dollars, he calculated, then stopped, guilty and ashamed. A sister. A poor widow with three children. It was a mitzvah. At that thought, the sorrow and the heavy yoke of responsibility lifted from his shoulders for a moment. After all, what does a man have left when he dies if not his good deeds? They would be his lawyers, defending him against the arguments of the Evil Inclination (the celestial district attorney) making a good case for his merits before God. But, he reminded himself, as the Talmud teaches, the greatest charity of all was to help make a man self-supporting. Stiff with mission, he walked quickly toward his sister’s apartment.