Streets of Gold (56 page)

Authors: Evan Hunter

Tags: #Contemporary

BOOK: Streets of Gold

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And then in 1965, the new album came out (I’ve blocked out the title) in the spring sometime, I’m sure it was the spring (I’ve blocked out the month), and it simply refused to move despite a lot of newspaper advertising and radio ballyhoo from Victor. In the next two months, I dropped from number two to number eight in the polls, a nose dive that seemed absolutely inconceivable to me. A month after that, a gig in Miami was abruptly canceled, and a month after that Mark started talking about playing a series of one-night stands across the country — “Get a new audience for yourself,” he said.

“What’s the matter with my old audience?” I asked.

“If you’re talking about your hard-core audience, you’ll always have that, Ike. But the big bread comes from a floater audience, and jazz lost some of those people to folk, and now it’s losing the rest of them to rock. It’s your own fault.”

“What are you talking about?
My
fault?”

“Not
your
fault personally. I’m talking about jazz musicians. You guys have become so intellectual, nobody knows what you’re doing anymore. These rock groups get up there and start playing and there’s a gut appeal...”

“Mark,” I said, “you give me any rock musician, and I’ll put him up against his jazz counterpart, and he’ll be wasted in ten seconds flat.”

“The jazz musician?”

“The
rock
musician! These clowns think they’re making music if they can play two or three chords in sequence. They learn the I, and IV, and the V, and they teach them to another kid down the street, and turn up the amps, and that’s it, that’s supposed to be music. Have you heard some of these guitar players driving a single chord into the ground, playing the same boring lick over and over again? I’ll put a guitar player like Joe Pass up against any one of them, and he’ll kill them in a minute.”

“Ike, what can I tell you?” Mark said. “Am I the arbiter of taste?”

“No, you’re my manager,” I said. “And my manager is supposed to get gigs for me.”

“All I’m trying to say is that you need a new audience, Ike. Maybe you ought to add a folk singer to the quintet. Or fuse jazz with rock, come up with something. . ..”

“I’m not a gimmick musician, Mark.”

“Who said you were...”

“What are you going to suggest next? That I do a
light
show next time I play?”

“That wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” Mark said.

“I’d rather retire gracefully than . ..”

“Oh, bullshit,” Mark said.

“. . . than corrupt the kind of music I’ve been playing for the past ten years.”

“Okay, so go play it,” Mark said. “Play it in your studio. Get your mother up there to listen to you. I’m trying to tell you it’s impossible to get back an audience that’s drifted away. You’ve either got to get a completely
new
audience or...”

“Or what?”

“There are other things. Maybe I can get you some work scoring a movie.”

“I’m
blind
, Mark.”

“So what? You’ll listen to the actors talking, and some stooge’ll describe the action to you.”

“I don’t want to score a movie. I want to play piano.”

“Well, what can I tell you?” Mark said.

I felt nothing but hostility and contempt for rock music and the people who were making it. It seemed to me that most of the rock musicians were barely competent instrumentalists who got together in groups only so they could combine and organize their ineptitude to create a sound which, highly amplified, obfuscated their lack of talent. In 1964, when the intellectuals embraced the Beatles, I analyzed “A Hard Day’s Night” (the tune, not the movie) in an attempt to discover why these four musicians who could not play their way out of a paper bag had suddenly captured the public’s imagination. It was a mix-olydian tune with a double tonic, and mildly interesting — certainly more interesting than much of what the other rock musicians were playing. But it seemed to me that even the Beatles were reducing a highly skilled form to something completely pedestrian.

And besides, they were putting me out of work, they were breaking my rice bowl.

Michael has run afoul of a bully in his class, a boy who constantly taunts him about seeing a shrink, and makes fun of his stutter, which is one of the reasons the poor kid
makes
the damn trip to Greenwich three times a week. (The analyst tells me the stutter is only a symptom; the real trouble is that Michael feels overpowered by his “famous” father, a not uncommon phenomenon. When I ask him why my other sons don’t stutter, he says, “They may be stuttering inside.”) In desperation, Michael challenges the boy to a supervised fistfight in the gymnasium. The boy accepts immediately; he is twice Michael’s size and certain he can demolish him. That night at dinner, Michael asks me how to fight. He has never had a fist-fight in his life.

I do not know how to advise him.

It is his older brother Andrew who tells him to make sure he gets in the first shot, just hit the other» guy right off and keep hitting him before he can catch his breath. In the playroom, I hear them boxing. Andrew offering encouragement as Michael punches at his open palms. I am afraid for my son, but I cannot help him, I do not know how to help him. The next day, when the other boy asks him if he’s sure he wants to go through with this, Michael punches him squarely and unexpectedly in the mouth, just as Andrew had advised, and keeps punching him across the length of the gym floor until the other boy begs him to stop. He describes the fight to us that night. “He was bleeding from the mouth and from the n-nose,” he says excitedly, and then turns to Andrew and says, “Thanks, Andy.”

I am losing them.

When they were infants, I held them in my arms at night, each and separately, and fed them their bottles and learned to change their diapers, though I was fearful at first of the safety pins. I bent over their cribs, and sniffed the sweet aroma of their baby smells, and powdered their bottoms, and listened to them giggling in wonder or surprise at each new discovery they made, and told them each and separately, over and over again, “I love you.”

I love them still.

But they are becoming men too soon.

At least once a month, and sometimes twice, Immigrant America came into our Wasp America living room in Talmadge. There was always good reason for these get-togethers. My mother’s birthday was October first, and mine was the fifteenth. Honest Abe’s birthday was in November. December meant Christmas. Sophie’s birthday was in January, Michael celebrated his in February. March was sometimes Passover and Easter both. Rebecca had been born in April and so had David (we had planned to name him April, if he’d been a girl). Mother’s Day came in May, and Father’s Day in June, and July 7 was my grandfather’s birthday, and August was Davina’s (we never celebrated Sett’s, fuck him), and Andrew had been born in September, and on my block that added up to a full year of family reunions, such as they were.

Rebecca despised them.

ANDREWS BIRTHDAY, 1965

S
o this is your birthday, huh, Andy Boy?
W
ell, let’s hope it’s full of joy!
E
verything bright and everything merry,
E
verything just like a bowl full of cherries!
T
hat’s our wish for you today.

S
weet sixteen is the happiest day,
I’l
l bet you kiss all the girls today.
X
is for xylophone, like in Daddy’s band
T
hat’s the sweetest quintet in all of the land.
E
verything you do should make him proud,
E
ven your mother should cheer out loud.
N
ow shout “Happy Birthday!” everyone in the crowd.

STELLA: He doesn’t
have
a xylophone in the band.

JIMMY: I couldn’t think of a word starting with X, Stella.

STELLA: Still, it don’t make sense if that isn’t what he has in his band, Ike, do you remember Goomah Katie in Newark, New Jersey? Her grandson got appointed principal of a high school.

SETH: You should get yourself a new tax lawyer, Ike. There are new gimmicks coming up every day, of the week, and that
kahker
you’ve got working for you is straight out of Charles Dickens. You know those jazz books you wrote? Did you know you can donate the manuscripts to a university library and get a big deduction?

DAVINA: Let me tell you what happened Friday. I got on the subway at Fifty-ninth and Lex, and this little Puerto Rican started, well, feeling me up, and I. . .

SOPHIE: You should have slapped his face for him!

DAVINA: No, what I did was reach behind me and take his hand in mine. I held it all the way downtown.

ABE: He probably thought you were falling in love with him, darling.

DAVINA: At least it stopped him.

JIMMY: Anyone want to play cards? Abe? Some poker?

SOPHIE: It’s chilly in here. Do you find it chilly in here?

PASSOVER, 1966

P
ray for us, Christians and Jews together,
A
nd help us get through this stormy weather.
S
ophie’s passed on, we miss her bright laughter.
S
ophie, dear loved one, rest well ever after.
O
n this day we praise God, and we offer him prayers,
V
ictims of grief, we must still be his heirs.
E
ver respectful, even in strife,
R
eady to face the rest of our life.

ABE: Well, frankly, Ike, I don’t know what Becky’s so upset about. I figured with Sophie dead, may she rest in peace, if anything should happen to me...

ME: I understand that, Pop. But Davina says you drew up a new will, is that right?

ABE: That’s right.

ME: And you’ve left everything to her.

ABE: Well, yes. What’s the matter with that? Seth isn’t a millionaire, you know. I figure you’ve taken good care of Becky,
chas vesholem
anything should happen to you. And I know you’ve got trust funds set up for the kids...

ME: Pop, that isn’t the point.

ABE: Then what’s the point? I think I’m missing the point.

ME: The point is you’re hurting Rebecca.

ABE: You’re making this up.

ME: Why would I make it up?

ABE: How do I know? Maybe
you
want the money.

ME: Pop, you can shove the money up your ass, for all I care. I’m talking about the fact that you have
two
daughters, and you’re hurting one of them by leaving everything you’ve got to the
other
one, to Davina.

ABE: Davina should have kept her mouth shut. I told her in private, and now she’s causing trouble.

ME: Pop,
you’re
the one causing trouble. Why don’t you change the will?

ABE: If it means that much to Becky, I’ll change it already. I don’t know why it should mean so much to her. She’s got plenty. You got plenty, the two of you together.

ME: Shall I tell her you’ll change it?

ABE: It’s not even that much money. What do you think it is, a fortune? It’s a couple of thousand dollars, that’s all.

ME: Shall I tell her?

ABE: Tell her, tell her.

ME: When will you change it?

ABE: I’ll get around to it.

MOTHER’S DAY, 1967

M
other’s Day wishes to the women here,
O
n this special day, we hold them all dear.
T
hough Davina gets to do the dishes,
H
ere’s extending her, too, the best of wishes.
E
ldest among us is dear Grandma Tess;
R
egards to you, Grandma, we wish you the best.
S
on Ike has his family, Rebecca’s the mother.