“It’s OK.”
“Of all the questions you’ve asked,” Artie says, “that is the one you shouldn’t have asked.”
“Maybe so,” I admit.
“And I’ve been pretty easy on you, too.”
“I know.”
“Why did you come here? How did you make the connection?”
“She wrote your name on the container that the poster was in.”
THEY’RE STILL FUCKING US. She didn’t mean Paul and Rochelle. That’s what I would have meant. What she meant was first everyone else and now the Left. The Isaacsons are nothing to the New Left, And if they can’t make it with them who else is there? YOU GET THE PICTURE. GOODBYE, DANIEL,
Later Sternlicht and Baby invited me up to the roof for some air. We smoked dope. They sang me a song up there, on the sooty roof smelling of dead air and tar, with the night close and hot and starless and the lights cast up from the street making me feel as if I was on a stove. The song was called Which Side Are You On.
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You either are a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.
Oh workers can you stand it
Oh tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
WHICH side ARE you ON?
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
They ended up singing the chorus right in my face. They broke themselves up. And I went home reacquainted with the merciless radical temperament.
In September 1967 Daniel I Lewin wrote a letter to his foster father, Robert Lewin, a professor of law. I don’t have a copy and I hope he didn’t file it. It was a shameful letter. Artie Sternlicht, let this be my apology.
Save this space for the letter my father wrote back:
October 4, 1967
Dear Dan,
Sorry it has taken me this long to answer your letter. You gave me some interesting homework. I won’t cite the precedents for you but it seems highly unlikely that a court would approve the termination of the trust if Susan so petitioned while she was under psychiatric care. Although she attains her majority this year, Lise and I remain her guardians until such time as she recovers.
However, as you know you are entitled now and have been since your twenty-fifth birthday to assume your pro rata share of the corpus. Susan’s illness does not impinge on that. If you were to decide to become her guardian in our stead and apply to the court for that purpose on the grounds that as Susan’s sibling you would be more likely than we to dispose of her share as she sees fit, you might get the court to agree. I, of course, would not contest such an application.
There remains one other exception. A third party might have grounds for suit in Susan’s behalf by claiming her mental health would be improved were she to assume control of her share of the corpus. I cannot predict what success he would have. But assuming that “the Isaacson Foundation” as endowed by her trust money would have a salutary effect on her condition, a court could conceivably find merit in this argument.
Needless to say I was fascinated by your questions. What have you found out? I don’t recall Susan’s mentioning any Artie Sternlicht, nor does your mother. Of course there was a period of a month or six weeks when she was not going to class, and there is no telling what she did during that time or where she went or whom she saw. In any event I am encouraged by the drift of your thinking—by the thought that you may be reconsidering your stand not to relieve me of the responsibility of your share of the trust. Please let us know what’s on your mind.
Love from us both,
Dad
That ends this part of the story. It is interesting to note, aside from everything else, the operating pressure of fatherhood in Robert Lewin’s letter. He wants to stabilize me with responsibility. That is a true blue american puritan idea. In that idea is the fusion of the Jew and America, both of them heirs of the ancient seafarers: you ride the sea best with lead in your keel. My lawyer father is no accident, and it is no accident that he loves American Law, an institution that constantly fails and that he constantly loves, like a bad child who someday in his love will not fail, stabilized with responsibility.
While my parents were in jail awaiting their trial General of the Armies was called home, Douglas MacArthur, who cut such a fine figure with his corncob pipe, his aviator shades, and the rakish block of his garrison cap. He had tried to make policy in opposition to Washington’s and he had propagandized against his own commander in chief. For his disobedience, his Neanderthal ego and his general failure to step smartly to the orders of an amateur captain of artillery, he was relieved as Supreme Commander of Everything and ordered home to a tumultuous reception. America had not forgotten her hero. In Washington, in New York, the streets were massed with shouting, screaming worshipers. There were parades. There was a mawkish address to both houses of Congress. There was talk of impeaching the President. There was talk of MacArthur for President. I watched these obscenities on Aunt Frieda’s magic new television in the afternoons when she was down in her store and unable to tell me not to waste electricity. MacArthur came closer to overthrowing the government of the U.S. than any person in modern times. He was acclaimed throughout the land. I noticed he combed his hair across the top of his head to hide his baldness. How could the country trust a man of such pathetic vanity? I began to wonder if he had been that good a general. What is a good general anyway? What are the criteria? At night Susan and I slept in the same bed, Aunt Frieda’s, while she slept on the couch in the living room, It was not a good arrangement. Under the sheet was a sheet of rubber. Susan was regressing and could not wake up to go to the bathroom. In the middle of the night a tide of urine gently lapped at my pajamas. I awoke in the urine mists of dawn.
I was desolate. It is an in-chest feeling of vacuum. I remembered the joy of traveling downtown on the subway with my mother and father, one on either side of me. We were going to hear the New York Philharmonic in an engagement at the Roxy. There was also a technicolor movie. Another time they took me to the Stanley Theater on 8th Avenue near 42nd Street and we saw Alexander Nevsky. What was life come to as I lay now with my leaky sister in the staleness of Aunt Frieda’s bed in Brooklyn, a loveless bed, and looked forward the next day to possibly another sentimental speech by a killer general.
As I work out the chronology I believe this period at Frieda’s coincides with the first of the government’s superseding indictments. There were a total of three as the U.S. Attorney and the FBI gradually perfected the scenario. First there were eight overt acts. Then there were nine Overt Acts. Then there were TEN OVERT ACTS.
FRYING, a play in ten overt acts
Monday the 5th
Hi, my dearest Danny, what do you think of Brooklyn? Is it interesting? Have you made any friends yet? I know it’s probably boring to you to be out of school, my honey, but all of this—the not being together, the disruption of the routine—is only temporary. In the meantime you should get Aunt Frieda to take you to the library and get lots of books to read. Mr. Ascher, “Uncle Jacob,” is trying to get you into the public school there, but that may take a few more days. My beloved little Susan will go to a nursery school.
Listen, my dear sweetheart, I have a surprise for you: “Uncle Jacob” will be bringing a present for each of you from us. I hope you enjoy it. Your father and I discussed what we would get you in our letters and we have asked him to bring it home to you from the store. That is to make you feel not so lonely, because it is from us—and also so that you will have the best possible time!
Please write to me again, my sweet angel boy, I enjoyed your letter so much. Tell me what is on your mind. You are such a comfort to me!
And please don’t worry about us! We all miss each other, but cooperate with your Aunt and take care of your sister—I know you do that without my even asking, my honey—and before you know it
well all be together again.
With lots and lots of love,
Your “Mom.”
It was two presents, an Erector set, which bored me, and a drawing pad and colored pencils. I was alarmed by the tone of the letter. I was hurt because it contained no information. Susan got a tea set of tin and a coloring book and crayons. I had to play house with her—an endless distracted game of house that began always with our sitting down to breakfast in front of the tea set. She was the mother and I was the father. After breakfast we drew pictures in our house. I was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe in Aunt Frieda’s apartment. She kept the windows locked. When Ascher came with the presents he tried to open the living room window but he couldn’t. The apartment was dark and airless. I was finding it more difficult to sleep. I had seen a 1930’s prison movie on television: the man was shaking the bars of his cell shouting I’m innocent! I’m innocent I tell ya! I’m innocent! breaking down in sobs because no one is there to hear him and he slides to the floor in a heap, still holding onto the bars of the cell door. All night my parents rose and fell on the bars, like the horses in a merry-go-round, pulling themselves up and sliding down with their hands attached to the bars.
Susan used the cushions of Aunt Frieda’s sofa to make the walls of the house. We moved over an armchair for the fourth wall. We accidentally stepped on some of the crayons and ground them into the rug. I didn’t put the Erector set away and Aunt Frieda nearly tripped on some of the screws in the dark hall rolling under her foot and scratching the floor.
She was terribly neat, but not clean. She wanted nothing moved in her dusty house. I tried to read the papers in her candy store and she screamed if I lifted one off the counter. If I messed it up how could she sell it? I learned how to steal the paper from her to see if there was anything in it about Paul and Rochelle. Neighborhood kids stole things from her all the time. When her back was turned. When the light hit her eyeglasses. I could have helped her but she didn’t ask for my help. I saw the same kind of coloring book on her shelves that Susan had. I saw the same kind of drawing pad and box of colored pencils I had. I realized these were Ascher’s presents and that he had probably bought them from Aunt Frieda. I put the newspapers I stole into the garbage. I often had spells of difficult breathing. These frightened me. I found that if I ran around and waved my arms like a windmill, I could breathe better for a moment. I knocked over a lamp and broke it. I could not make friends in the neighborhood because I belonged to Aunt Frieda who was intolerant of children and not popular. She had warned me not to dare say who I was other than her nephew. Susan told a little girl one day that our parents were in jail. This was a lower middle class tenement neighborhood. There were a lot of smart poor people in this neighborhood. One day somebody’s older brother was reported missing in Korea. There were incidents.
I found that when I couldn’t breathe well I became manically active. I did not speak, I screamed. I did not walk, I ran. I couldn’t keep still. I made a game of spying on Aunt Frieda. I peeked through the keyhole to watch her in the bathroom. When she walked to work down the three flights of stairs I followed one flight behind. I stole candy from her counter. I memorized the phone number in her booth and called it from her phone in the apartment. When she answered I hung up. Susan and I did acrobatics on the bed: I held Susan at full arm’s length over my head. I dangled her upside down over the side of the bed. She shrieked merrily. We used the bed as a trampoline.
There is nothing in this time that is valuable to me. I feel sorry now for Aunt Frieda who was merely a limited person too tried by her brother Paul, too tried by his shitting and pissing children who tortured her, too tried by the life she was forced to lead. She was not mean, neurotic, self-serving, insensitive or miserly. She was limited. We lasted, or she lasted, five weeks. We never did get to school in Brooklyn. There are no clues in this five weeks. If she were alive today I would not go see her because she would have nothing to tell me that I could use.
Every night for supper we had elbow macaroni mixed with cottage cheese. When Ascher transferred us to the Shelter, Frieda testified that she could not afford to keep us and could not physically contain us. These were only half-truths. One day I was caught spying on her in the bathroom: her eyes were shut and her head was tilted back and her teeth were bared as she sat on the pot with her bloomers around her knees arching her back in an ecstasy of defecation; something that sounded like a rock fell into the water beneath her. A moment later I bumped my head against the doorknob and the door, not quite shut, swung slowly open. Frieda would never forgive me.
I remember nothing of our trip to the Shelter in the Bronx. Ascher probably took us. Perhaps Frieda came along to help effect it. Perhaps there were two trips, one for interviews. I remember some sort of interview. It was a weird time. The newspapers were constantly trying my parents in releases from the Justice Department. There was never in any announcement from J. Edgar Hoover a presumption of innocence. An image grew of my father as a master spy. As a master spy and ringleader. Over a period of a few weeks he became more and more prominent in any discussion of various spy arrests. Dr. Mindish was portrayed as one of those who carried out his orders. I was becoming confused. If my father was a ringleader was I in his ring? How could I be in his ring if I didn’t know about it before I read it in the newspaper? Was this the Paul Isaacson who was my father? If it wasn’t where was my father? I found many of the words difficult. I missed my father’s voice analyzing, endlessly analyzing and exposing the lies in the newspaper, on the radio and television, in the air; I missed his truth, I missed his power to tell me the real meaning of what was presented to me. When I received a letter from him it was as uninformative and strange as the one from my mother. It didn’t sound like him. I tried to work things out the way he used to but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t summon up that power. He was being transformed before my eyes and he wasn’t there to stop it from happening. If he was in jail maybe he was an atomic ringleader. The operations of my mind tried to conform my life and my relationship with my father to the words of the newspaper.
It was Ascher’s grim face which always brought me back. Looking at this overburdened man sinking deeper and deeper into the responsibilities of my parents’ fate, there could be no question about the semantics of disaster. They were fucking us. Each new indictment handed down by the Grand Jury perfecting the conspiracy, expanding it, adding to its overt acts, drove it in deeper.
I felt guilty. Truman had to order the scientists to develop a super bomb. Although he had worked for the atom bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer opposed the development of the super bomb and so would be declared a security risk. Although he liked the A-bomb he didn’t like the H-bomb and so would be thought of as a traitor.
ALONE IN THE COLD WAR
with Franny and Zooey
Each boy had an army bunk bed with khaki blankets which he was expected to make every morning, a cubby next to the bed, and a footlocker at the foot of the bed. Your laundry bag was supposed to be tied to the foot of the bed. You were not supposed to paste anything on the walls. The walls were a kind of brown tile. The floor was vinyl tile, also brown. The windows were tinted safety windows imbedded with diamond cross-hatching, like filamented chain link fence. All the surfaces were hard and the din was often unbelievable. To quiet us down he blew a whistle which left points of pain in my ears. He blew a whistle to wake us up in the morning. There were always thirty to forty boys in the room, ages five to twelve. They tried to assign little guys to big guys, a kind of big brother system, but it didn’t always work. Some of the kids there were obviously sick: it was commonly thought they were retarded but I know now at least a couple of them were autistic. One kid never got off his bed of his own free will. If he was stood up near his bed he stood there until he was moved. They called him the Inertia Kid. Someone always had to arrange the Inertia Kid in the position he was supposed to be in in that moment. Another boy, a swarthy little hysteric, did not speak in recognizable sentences or with e
motions that had anything to do with what was going on. He had a habit of walking around the edges of the gym whenever we went there to play. Or the outdoor yard. This kid would run around the circumference of whatever enclosure we were in, and after the first few times you didn’t even notice him. He was always chattering to himself and walking around the edges of places. All the oddballs were put down at the end of the room. At the other end, near the doors, were the transient beds. Boys who came to the Shelter for only a few days or a week or two stayed there near the doors. So the sense you had of the community was of a hard core in the middle with eroded borders of nuts and temporaries. After the first month I was moved from temporary status to hardcore.
We were on the third floor of the Shelter. The girls’ section was on the second floor. Sometimes at night I lay after Lights Out and in the dark quiet heard the screams of rage of my sister coming up through the walls.
Once a week we had Fire Drill. Once a week we had Bomb Drill. For Fire Drill you went out on the sidewalk. For Bomb Drill you stayed in.
The first floor was for the offices of the staff, the lunchroom and the kitchen. The fourth and top floor was completely taken up by the indoor gym. The name of the place was East Bronx Children’s Welfare Shelter, City of New York (Hon. William O’Dwyer, Mayor. Hon. Edward J. Flynn, Bronx Borough President). It is located off Tremont Avenue near Crotona Park in a cluster of municipal buildings.
A bus took the hardcores to school everyday. I don’t know why we were taken to one public school rather than another. There was one within walking distance to which we did not go. The big purple school we did go to was as far away, although in a different direction, as what I thought of as my real purple school, P.S. 70. It made little impression on me and I don’t remember the number of it today. Nobody cared whether you did the work or not. It was an old school with tired, grim teachers and a lot of black kids.