New Moon (14 page)

I was bashful and silent at P.S. 6, cowed by teacher prerogative. But Ramaz with its comic-book deity peeking out from behind clouds seemed fake and overblown, more like a parody of pedagogy. Hebrew seemed less like a real language than a punishment couched in letters and words. I found it humiliating to have to be learning them instead of interpreting dreams with Dr. Fabian, and it brought out the rebellious side of me. I openly acted the buffoon, disrupting class. I folded my yarmulke into an origami-like boat. I challenged Bible stories. I asked where the cavemen were in the Garden of Eden.

Though the word with its negative connotation wouldn’t come into vogue for another half century, Ramaz was a madrasa, albeit an upper-middle-class burlesque of religious zealotry.

One afternoon in the gym before classes began, without realizing what I was doing—I thought I was trying to run faster than I had ever run before—I put my head down and crashed full speed into the wall, knocking myself out. I remember sitting on the floor, dazed, crying from pain. That was my last day at Ramaz.

I enjoyed a minor break from Hebrew School before they enrolled me in the Park Avenue Synagogue. The setting was more grandiose, but it was the same conspiracy of elders. Once again, I intentionally botched translations and mispronounced lessons, throwing in the names of baseball players. I translated a Hebrew phrase that vaguely sounded like a Yankee shortstop as “Willy Miranda,” another as “Bill Skowron,” the new first baseman. The teacher said that I was committing sacrilege in the House of God. I said, “Yankee Stadium is the House of God.”

“God punishes blasphemers like you.”

During Purim fair, our class made a Gamal Nasser dart board. As the child artist finished her caricature to giggles and claps, I whispered that this was wrong, that Arabs were people too—first, to Elisha (who told on me); then, when summoned to the front of the room, to the teacher. I was ordered downstairs to the principal’s office. “Good,” I announced. “I like him. He’s a nice guy.” The room erupted in laughter.

The principal, Mr. Liechtling, summoned the rabbi and, on
request, I repeated my comment to him. He gasped and said, “No, they’re not, they’re animals.”

I couldn’t take this duo seriously; they were too much like a comedy routine, Abbot and Costello. I shook my head and repeated the offensive sentiment, “You shouldn’t throw darts at human beings.”

“You’re an anti-Semite,” Liechtling said. I had never heard the word so, at his invitation I looked it up in the dictionary on his stand.

“So,
are you
an anti-Semite?”

The definition said: “… hostile to the people and language of Israel.”

“Yep.”

I was expelled from the Park Avenue Synagogue. I couldn’t believe such a lucky punishment.

After that I was required only to attend Saturday services. I hated those too—having to hold the prayer book open, stand and sit with crowds of fancy dressed people, pretending to read along. I despised the stink of lotions and sweat, the unacknowledged mood of an ethnic gathering, the pretentious march of loyal students bearing the Torah. I played games based on page numbers, flipping up corners impartially to see which digit was in the last position. Odds and evens fell on both sides in the Haftorah, which made a fair match of integers. I used divisibility and indivisibility into twelve—Gil McDougald’s number—as my means of drafting two teams: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 versus 0, 5, 7, 8, and 9. There were great streaks by each squad, but I have forgotten them all by now, just that they occurred, defying the odds and making time pass more quickly.

Yet I readily accompanied Daddy to his orthodox schul across Lexington because it was old and smelled like Jessie’s Jip Joint. There was a science-fiction quality to the gold-encrusted Torah and rough-throated ram’s horn, its sound making pungent ozone in my marrow. The cantors’ impassioned chanting got hysterical and zany, and Daddy, who had been raised to be a cantor before he fled to CCNY and then the Catskills, was called to the pulpit many times per service to help with
davening.
I liked to observe him, a man among men, a ringer among devotees, a showman always.

My mother, who had no religious interests, accused me of phony superiority and blamed psychiatry for my bad attitude.

During baseball season, there was a special treat after schul, for Daddy regularly stopped at a garage below Lex to bet on Sunday’s games. He’d offer me a Chiclet from his yellow pack, then another, as he sat going over the day’s line with the attendant, occasionally asking my opinion of a starting pitcher. I kept his faith and never told.

I went willingly with Bridey to her church on the Spanish side of 96th Street too. There I felt the enchantment of forbidden territory, the hauntingness of hymns, the pitch of a solemn ceremony, tone of an alien crowd. I could somehow feel the choir and organ telling me where the dungeon stairs were located, for they raised a merciful deity and cast a salient spell.

I realized that liking church was blasphemy for a Jewish boy, but antithetical forces battled inside me. I had been called the devil incarnate by my own mother and needed to redeem that hex somewhere, certainly not in a synagogue. The real demon was far worse than Satan and quailed before the nomenclature of Catholic prayers—I knew as much from Bridey. So I wanted to cross 96th Street and confront his shadow, join soldiers who were Irish like her, Puerto Rican like Ramon. Most of all, I was following my intuition, and it told me that if I was going to be a Hebrew School truant, I better make my peace with God elsewhere. Bridey’s church was that place.

As at Dr. Fabian’s, I was touching the wan edges of exorcism without recognition.

I dreamed of going beneath into grottos where I saw a deactivated dungeon. Half decayed, it was once stately, even beautiful.

Though I was glad for the mitigation, these dreams didn’t fix me—dereliction was never an antidote to terror. The form that gave rise to the dungeon was illimitable, so it could stage other ambushes, machinations more macabre and hideous.

Somehow between between Towers household spooks and Grossinger’s version of paradise, my terror of the void and my spunk in standing up against the rabbis—between the Park Avenue Synagogue and the nether side of 96th Street—I found a viable
minyan.

At Christmas that year I got the only present I cared about—to return to Grossinger’s. Uncle Paul invited Larry Abelman, my counselor, and his new bride Jackie to take care of me there the first few days.

On the much awaited afternoon my mother remained in her bedroom; she would not come out to say goodbye, so I went down in the elevator with my suitcase to wait on the sidewalk. Joe had already picked up my counselor, so Larry and Jackie were in the back seat when he pulled up. What a strange transposition this was: my counselor and his wife in my grandfather’s car! We inched along crowded streets across the George Washington Bridge onto the highway north. Until major roads reached the Catskills it was a three-hour journey, most of it on old Route 52. I passed the time by racing Larry and Jackie to find letters in the shifting landscape in order from A to Z, hunting for “Antiques,” “Exit,” and “Pizza” at prime moments. We dashed through the alphabet three times, each of us winning once. Joe pulled over at the approximate midpoint, the Red Apple Rest, a sprawling truck stop upgraded to a restaurant, and treated us to cherry pie.

In the mountains the world was bright with crystals and dunes of snow.

Arriving at dusk, we were directed to our rooms on the third floor of my father’s house. In the morning we ate breakfast at the Hotel and then hiked across the snow-covered golf course all the way to the Lake where people sat on chairs, fishing through holes in the ice.

There was extra excitement that afternoon because Whitey Ford was rumored to be at the skating rink with his wife. I hastened Larry and Jackie through lunch so we could go see. At the rink, Selma, who was in charge of the skate shop, stepped out of her office to fit us. As I rose in the strange footwear, I found it a chore to balance on its narrow blades while making my way along the carpeted floor, down the stairs to a rubber pad. Once on the ice, I stumbled beside the railing while Jackie held my hand.

Holding my arm, Irving Jaffee, the pro, gave me a brief lesson
in gliding, which concluded with his presenting me, Paul’s son, to Whitey Ford. We shook hands with mittens. Then I edged alongside the blond Yankee, amazed to be looking up and seeing his visage in an overcoat rather than pinstripes, having him right me when I fell, though he was having a hard time keeping his own balance. “Casey’s gonna kill me,” he announced, “if I break my left arm.” Back at P.S. 6 I told that to an astonished Phil. Afterwards Whitey conducted a baseball clinic around the fireplace, and I impressed everyone by asking questions about Yankee farmhands.

The next day Larry got his movie camera, and we went to the toboggan, a frozen track on the hillside behind the rink. There he directed a short film in which we were the actors. He called it “The Human Cannonball.” First, he stood at the bottom and filmed Jackie and me going up the hill alongside other guests on a rope-drawn trolley. Then he followed behind as we ascended a ramp into an elevated hut warmed by a fire in a metal barrel. There a gruff dwarf in an overcoat, ear-muffs, and a scarf that made him seem to have no neck packed people onto long flat sleds and sent them flying out the chute. My boots were lugged forward into Jackie’s lap as she gripped them. I held on so tight I could barely see. With the dwarf’s shove we shot out the opening and, in exhilaration (a pinch of fright too), we seemed to fly, as the friction of wood on ice made a satisfying hum. I kept my head buried in Jackie’s coat, air nipping my cheeks and ears. We were slowing on the straightaway when we crashed into bales of hay. Larry ran toward us with the camera and filmed as we got to our feet, brushing off stalks.

On the next trip he sat in the front of the toboggan, braving the cold as he held the lens out.

My hands were numb by the time we headed to the canteen for milk shakes and cookies. The place was a hubbub, filled with cigarette smoke and chatter. On the way home we passed Grandpa Harry. He stood by a construction site, observing men putting up scaffolding, yelling orders to them, the collar of his overcoat pulled up tight around his chin. “You keepin’ warm?” he asked me. “Look at those gloves. They aren’t warm enough! Are your
feet dry? Those boots are no good.” He turned to Larry. “Get him others. Charge ’em to me.”

Later I visited him in his room, the door on the left at the rear of Grandma’s house, where he sat in stiff dignity in a blue shirt, underpants, and suspenders, watching a boxing match on TV. In his heavily accented Elmer Fudd voice he asked me, how’s my mother, how’s Bobtowers, does he miss Grossinger’s, do I remember when he and Joe used to come by with lollipops and chocolate spoons?

I did.

“Your mother nearly bit my head off, that’s what!”

Day after day in Uncle Paul’s living room, presents piled up for Michael and James, countless boxes left by guests and clients. On Christmas morning Michael got exhausted opening them, then surly, as machines didn’t work right or came without batteries. “Junk!” he cried, throwing stuff against the walls. Aunt Bunny put an end to this tantrum, saying, “Enough of them there apples.” She took us outside to build a snowlady, providing some of her own clothes for realism. Then, to my astonishment, she started a snowball fight with Michael and me. She got right into the thick of it and hit me three times with solid shots.

My visits to Grossinger’s were a treachery for which my mother never forgave me. She had uncommon discipline to look at me for the remainder of my childhood as if I were Benedict Arnold and Judas combined.

When I reported my ice-skating with Whitey Ford, she subtly baited Daddy to draw him in. “You hear that? He needs to be told the facts.”

“Who do you imagine brought ballplayers to Grossinger’s in the first place?” he asked. I acknowledged that it must have been him. “They live off the success of Bob Towers,” he said. “And they parade around second-rate idiots like Lou Goldstein in my place. They’re going to destroy their reputation in one generation.”

“He thinks everything’s going to be handed to him, just the way it is at Grossinger’s,” she rejoined. “Well, it’s not. It’s dog-eat-dog out there.”

“Amen,” declared my stepfather.

When I told Uncle Paul about these comments, he heard them unperturbedly, a tinge of annoyance but mostly amusement and disdain. He said my mother and Daddy were jealous. He was particularly provoked by the idea that Bob had made Grossinger’s and could do a better job running it. “You tell my old buddy Bob Towers,” he chuckled, “that any time he wants to set up his own hotel and go into competition with us, I’ll be glad to meet him on even terms.” He seemed delighted by the challenge. “Richard, you should know that people like Bob are second-rate grumblers. They can’t be big enough on their own so they complain about others’ success. There’s no reason for you to believe him. You’re a Grossinger yourself and that’s something he can never be.” I stared at his gold PG cuff links. He cut such a giant figure with governors, movie stars, and ballplayers that I wondered if I could ever attain his level of prestige. “Your mother never wanted to leave,” he finally added. “Me, yes! The Hotel, no! She and Bob would love to have remained at Grossinger’s, but actions come with a price. Sour grapes. That’s all it is.”

Sour grapes? I had an image of little blue barrels of candy, but I sensed that Uncle Paul didn’t appreciate the degree of oppression I was under. I pleaded to live at his house, but he told me that wasn’t possible. “Of course, I want you to, but the law says otherwise, and you and I have to obey the law.”

During the next attack on Uncle Paul I argued back and defended him. Mommy’s and Daddy’s screaming got louder and louder until their clamor in close quarters began to crack my brain. I ran down all six flights of stairs out onto the street and continued around the block, fantasizing that I’d see the Hotel car and it would pick me up. Every doorway and alley attracted me, but in the end, of course, I returned.