The Poison Tree (3 page)

Uncle Lee had actually been married once, to a Southern belle that Mom said came from a state that began with the letter “A,” but it didn't last more than a week. Since then, he'd lived with Gramsie, and worked at MacLaren's, the Men's Wear business that Gramps owned in the Garment District.

As I grew older, I felt sorry for Uncle Lee with his truss, bicarbonate of soda, and ExLax (which I insisted on trying once, and found it didn't taste nearly as good as advertised). I knew, too, that Lee had once been admitted to Harvard Law School, but was forced to drop out in his first year to help with the family business during World War II. He never went back. Mom did tell me, though, that Uncle Lee's grades were even higher than Judge
Brandeis's, and his exam paper was still on display at Harvard, right next to that of the famous judge.

Sometimes when I stayed over at my grandparents', I went to work with Uncle Lee the next morning. I helped cut trousers (Gramsie told me never to use the word “pants” in her house—it was the only thing that could make Gramps angry). I marked pieces of fabric with tailor's chalk. I liked the feel of the soft, greasy, white chalk between my thumb and forefinger; it wasn't at all like the dry, brittle chalk they used in school. That chalk squeaked and left a mess on your hands. This chalk was soft and smooth and shiny, like a baby seal's fur.

For reasons I couldn't understand, my father hated Uncle Lee. Once at breakfast, he spooned up a big mess of scrambled eggs from the bowl and held it above his plate. Then he dumped the eggs down on his plate, and announced that this was what his brother-in-law's brains looked like. More awful still, he then shoveled a big forkful of eggs into his mouth and swallowed them all. After that, Uncle Lee became known at home as Scrambled Eggs.

My father asked if I could remember my younger brother's bris. When I told him I couldn't, he laughingly told me the story of how Uncle Lee was afraid of blood. So, when the Moyle's knife bit into the foreskin of Bobby's penis, he keeled over and collapsed right there in front of everybody. Lee's toupee dislodged and no one wanted to touch it, so the maid had to pick it up—with silver ice tongs—as they carried him to a couch. That story made me tear up—I couldn't bear to think of Uncle Lee on the ground with his toupee off and everyone laughing. I decided it was probably not true, but since it was one of the few times my father laughed, I pretended it was funny, and I laughed, too.

Uncle Lee picked me up at seven o'clock every Saturday morning, but never set foot inside our house until after my father left. He fingered the brim of his hat between his hairless hands, standing by the little table in our hallway, which was twisted into the shape of an enormous fish encrusted with real seashells. One particular Saturday, Uncle Lee announced it was “high time” I learned to drive. Where he grew up in Pennsylvania, all the boys drove tractors by the time they were eight, and girls knew how to drive by the age of ten or so. Girls! So, at age nine, I wasn't really surprised to be
sitting on Uncle Lee's lap holding the steering wheel of his big, black 1956 Cadillac, whizzing through the deserted streets of midtown Manhattan.

A thin sheen of rain covered the streets, and I remember being a little scared—I wasn't one of those daredevil kids who embraced danger—but it felt completely natural for me to be behind the wheel of Uncle Lee's Cadillac. I was locked securely between his legs, clutching the bulky, scalloped ridges of the steering wheel, unable to reach the pedals as he helped steer. Then we stopped. He told me to wait outside in the car while he went into a novelty shop on Broadway and Times Square. He came back fifteen minutes later with something hidden behind his back. He had a surprise for me, he said, and unfurled a newspaper which read:

HENRY SCHVEY ELECTED PRESIDENT IN LANDSLIDE!

As he handed the paper to me, a thrill and feeling of absolute confidence and power shot up my spine. I knew I would be elected president someday. It was inevitable. That was how things were supposed to be. That's how I felt around Uncle Lee.

At least until I ruined everything.

We'd driven all the way to Coney Island to ride the roller coaster. The minute we exited the coaster, Lee ran straight to the men's room and threw up. There was a little blue feather tucked in the band of Uncle Lee's homburg, and I remember him rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger, moaning as he ran to the men's room as soon as we were allowed off the coaster. But after his stomach settled, we still went to Nathan's for hotdogs and went to a penny arcade where I played skeeball for hours. Uncle Lee sat watching, like he did at the merry-go-round, tapping his capped, too-perfect teeth with one forefinger while I played. Sometimes he whistled, but more often he emitted a strange sound through his front teeth with no discernible tune.

Then it happened. We visited a magic shop on West 43rd Street on our return to the city. We'd been there together before; the owner knew Uncle Lee and even addressed him deferentially as “Mr. Lerner.” Uncle Lee said I could pick out several tricks. I found a whoopee cushion, and a plastic ice cube with a fly inside so it looked like a dead fly was in someone's drink. I also found plastic vomit, which I would use on Margaret on a Saturday night
after eating fudge and watching
The Blob
. But Uncle Lee liked different kinds of tricks, tricks that involved “prestidigitation” and “legerdemain,” words so odd I was certain he had invented them. While the man behind the counter showed me disappearing ink, Uncle Lee stood at the other side of the store, passing steel rings back and forth, forming a chain. Now the rings were separate, now they were linked again—how had he done it? Uncle Lee liked the magic store, probably more than I did. He never seemed to stutter there, even talking with grownups. As we were about to leave, I asked him for a pen that wrote in disappearing ink. But when he looked at his watch, he said, “Uh-oh, we're late.”

“Late for what?” I asked. There was no such thing as late. Uncle Lee had taken me to a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium the previous year and we stayed through both games—even when the second game went into extra innings. I knew he was bored, but I pretended not to notice. I ate eight hot dogs. Eight! The game ended with Yogi Berra hitting a home run, and we celebrated by drinking Yoo Hoos, which had Yogi's smiling picture on the bottle.

“Your p-p-parents might be worried.”

Of course, I knew exactly what he meant. My father might have returned from playing tennis, and would wonder where I was. When he found out I was with Scrambled Eggs, there might be a problem. I knew this, but told him I just wanted to look at more tricks. Uncle Lee said there was no time.

“But I really want to see that one, just that one. Pleeease.” Uncle Lee hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and was about to relent just like I knew he would. Then, looking down at his Bulova, said, “We need to leave now.”

This made me furious. “What do you care? It's Saturday.”

“We're late.”

“You're afraid, aren't you?”

“Of what? Of course not.”

“Of
you know who
,” I spat. “If you're not, why do you always wait outside our front door when you come to pick me up?”

“I don't.”

“Yes, you do. You always wait out in the hallway by the fish table and never come in.”

“I don't.”

“Yes, you do. Uncle Lee, why do you have to be such a fairy?”

As soon as I said it, God, I wish I hadn't.

Uncle Lee grabbed the tricks, but one of the steel rings fell and bounced off the glass counter top, and rolled along the floor. He retrieved it and then grabbed my wrist hard and stomped out of the magic shop, his size thirteen wing-tipped shoes slapping the sidewalk.

When we reached the Cadillac, and even though I knew what the answer was going to be, I asked if I could drive home like he promised. Uncle Lee's mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then he opened my door and said, “Get in.” Just like any other grownup. We drove home without a word.

I wanted to die. So, I banged my head, first softly, then harder and harder, against the window, thinking maybe the door would pop open, I'd fall out and get run over. I'd heard all sorts of stories from my grandparents about careless boys who drowned in rowboats in Central Park; people who fell to their deaths through the grating in front of grocery stores; or people who were tossed from moving cars because they had left their doors unlocked. I'd been warned not to step on manhole covers, or on the steaming grills above where the subway churned below. Things like that happened all the time to people in New York. Only now, when I wanted something really terrible to happen to me, it didn't.

After losing myself in dreams for hours in my father's apartment, I decide to walk through the neighborhood of my youth. The air tastes of ashes. Somehow, the streets still smell like the inside of his apartment with its residue of Montecristo cigars, but it feels better to be outside. I circle the apartment building where I grew up at 86th and Madison, but can't make myself go in. So I turn around and walk south along Madison Avenue. The first thing I see is the old Croydon Hotel, which is no longer called the Croydon. But this is where I used to buy myself tuna fish sandwiches and sour kosher dills, and where I bought a half-pound of head cheese for Gramps just days before he died. Most important, this is where I once punted a football so high it actually bent back the first letter O in the brass Croydon sign and remained that way for years, a testament to my unrecognized athletic prowess. That sign is gone now, leaving no trace of my achievement; but it makes me happy to see it anyway.

Gone too is the Madison Avenue Deli opposite our apartment building on the corner of 86th. I went there after tennis with my father, Dr. Friedman, and his son, Alex. I ordered stuffed derma with thick brown gravy and Cel-Ray soda, just to be like my father. I couldn't believe they made soda that tasted like celery, or why anyone would want to drink it; but since he liked it, I wanted to try it. The soda tasted awful, but I liked the taste and grainy texture of the stuffed derma with its thick brown gravy, until Alex came over to me and whispered, “Don't eat that—derma is skin! Intestines! You're eating guts, half-wit!”

My father ate thick slices of tongue dotted with tiny papillae, or chicken schmaltz with seeded kosher rye bread and unsalted butter. Once I watched
him smear bright yellow chicken fat over pale yellow butter at Grandma's; I must have looked horrified, because Grandma said it was a special treat, and asked if I wanted some. My reply, thick with a thirteen-year-old's sarcasm, “I'd rather have a plutonium sandwich on rye.” Nobody laughed.

I wander down Madison Avenue, and locate the buildings where my school friends, Pete and Ephraim, lived. Pete was a big, sturdy kid who swam breaststroke on the varsity swim team, but hurt his knee swimming and was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatters disease. Pete's parents were psychiatrists, and suddenly, I again hear my mother screaming at Pete's mom when she discovered that Mrs. Amsterdam had taken us to see
Psycho
for Pete's thirteenth birthday. The year was 1960. I was not yet twelve; a year younger than the rest of the guys. My mother cried when she found out. She yelled on the phone for half an hour that Mrs. Amsterdam had ruined my life. There was one scene, where Norman Bates dresses up like an old woman, that did give me nightmares, but I never told my mother about it. Oddly, the thing that frightened me most was that the killer's name—Norman—was the same as my father's. Of course, there was nothing Mrs. Amsterdam could have done about that.

Two blocks further down on Madison at 83rd Street is where Ephraim lived. I spent even more time there than I did at Pete's. Ephraim's parents spoke with heavy Austrian-Jewish accents, and had escaped Hitler's Germany just before it became impossible for Jews to get out. I recall that his parents looked and smelled different from mine. I don't think they bathed as often, and their house had a different feel. They talked about art and classical music all the time, and never allowed television during mealtimes. I felt sorry for Ephraim having to live like that, but at least he was able to have friends over to his house, whereas I never could. He had rigged a kind of basketball hoop out of a wire hanger in his bedroom so you could actually play basketball there, even though the ceilings were low and you had to use a tennis ball or a rolled up pair of socks. Our games always included tackling and fighting, and usually ended up with someone on the floor, crying. But we kept on doing it, and loved it.

Once, I ate dinner over at Ephraim's, and they had boiled beef with red cabbage, which stank up the entire hallway. The whole time we ate, his parents kept muttering something in a disgusting, guttural language, saying “shit” this and “shit” that, back and forth to one another. I figured they were
cursing at one another like my parents always did at dinnertime. It was only later that I learned from Ephraim that his mother had attended a retrospective of the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz at the Guggenheim a few blocks away, and that they were having a discussion about art in Yiddish, not hurling insults at one another like my parents did.

Even in an apartment that stank of boiled beef and cabbage, Ephraim had his friends over to visit. I never could. Dirty laundry—mostly silk stockings, girdles, brassieres—were in almost every room, along with toys and books. When my father saw these traces of “Lerner filth,” he flew into a rage. Often he emitted an actual growl, then a terrible smile. Sometimes the police were called in to intervene, although no one was arrested, and nothing ever changed as a result. Two or three friendly officers in uniform would come inside, and the shouting or beatings would stop, but never for very long. The condition of our apartment was usually the reason for these altercations, although I would not have invited anybody over even if the apartment had miraculously become spotless. At any moment, it might happen. He'd whip out his belt and chase me around our dining room table. Usually this was because he caught me in some lie or other. I lied about everything: Where were my rubbers? Why was I late? Why did I flunk the Math test? Why were my shoes untied? Why did I forget to walk Blackie?