Chapter 1
I always ran from the things I didn’t like or understand, and maybe that’s the real reason—not the random events in my life or, for that matter, in the wide world—I didn’t become the man my father, or even I, thought I’d become.
You see, I come from a long, long line of blue-blood lawyers, a line first drawn on the other side of the Atlantic, a line then lengthened across the often rough, often beautiful sea, a line ended generations later at the handle of my H. L. Leonard fly rod.
But the handle, as it turned out, was also the start of a new line: one of anglers and of fly casters.
So even now, as the long, snake-curled river of my life flows closer, and seemingly faster, toward where seconds cannot flow—I’m reluctant to call it death—I again reflect on the dark, dark chapter in the history of my life and ask: If I could wade back in time, would I put down the fly rod and become a lawyer instead of an angler and a fly caster?
Yes is the answer I wish for.
No is the answer I run from. Why do I run? Because a voice inside me, often speaking a language I still can’t understand, tells me that, for better or worse, a man who strove to cast farther, who strove to see things differently and to find the courage to make peace with the world, is what I was meant to be.
But like a dry fly dragged by fast water, I am way ahead of my story.
I’ll start by focusing on my parents. Both were from well-to-do families that fell from grace, so to speak. My father’s family fell because his father’s uncontrollable rage led him to punch another lawyer. My mother’s family fell because her father’s reckless gambling led him to bankruptcy.
My father reacted to his family’s fall by turning his back on professional baseball, studying hard and graduating near the top of his class at Columbia Law School. When he didn’t get the job offers he deserved, he, along with a Jew and an Italian, kicked convention to the side of the road and started their own law firm in a cramped, one-room office.
Three months later they had a small but steady client list.
Now before I go any further, I should say that, even though my father came from an agnostic, Presbyterian family, somewhere along the road—maybe to rebel against his father—he came to believe strongly in God. Every night before bedtime, he read the Bible. Every Sunday he went to church where, as it turned out, he made important social and business contacts. His most important, ironically, was my mother. I say ironically because my mother was an atheist. Why she played the organ in a church I can only guess: She was looking for a husband.
But let me wade back in my story.
My mother reacted to her family’s fall by dreaming of becoming a great pianist and practicing—without a metronome she often told us—four, five, sometimes six hours a day; but when her big audition came, her emotion iced. She played coldly.
She went home, cried, and never auditioned again. Needing money, she gave piano lessons. Then she met my father. Was she drinking by then? Probably. Did my father see it? Maybe. Tall, beautiful, dark-haired women, I guess, camouflage their defects well.
Three months after my parents met, they married.
Nine months later, in 1896, I was born, and two years later, my sister, Rebecca.
By then my hardworking father’s law practice thrived and, like the rising sun, brightened our family name. And so in his deep voice I often heard love and confidence, especially when he taught me the techniques of playing baseball. If I threw over his head or booted a ground ball he just smiled and said, “Try again. But not so hard. Ian, you always have to try to stay within yourself.”
I once asked, “What does that mean?”
He put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. “It means you should relax and let your body flow. You see, Ian, if we practice enough our body will memorize the right techniques, almost the way actors and singers memorize words. Does that make sense?”
I wasn’t sure, but I answered, “Yes.”
Sure or not, I loved practicing baseball and being the best player in my class. And I also loved dreaming of being a great lawyer, like my father, and looking into the eyes of jurors and heroically pleading that my poor, innocent client should go free.
And my client always did.
Like most boys, I desperately wanted my father’s approval. So when I became a teenager and my father told stories from his large collection of Civil War books, I listened. My father’s favorite character in the war was Ulysses “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. Grant, in my father’s eyes, was one of the greatest generals who ever lived. Again and again my father told me—my sister wouldn’t listen—how Grant never let anything stop him. “To surround Vicksburg, Ian, Grant didn’t let the swampy land bog down his army. He simply left his supply lines, lived off the land and crossed the Mississippi way south of the city. You see Ian, Grant was a humble man. He always listened to the generals who served under him, and he never tried to impose his will on the roads, the rivers or the hills. He always let the terrain map out his strategy.”
At first I eagerly listened to my father’s stories, until he brought home a big book of Civil War photographs. “Ian, let’s look at these together.” The book’s first photograph was of a battlefield covered with bodies twisted like broken dolls. The next photograph was a close-up of dead soldiers seeming to gasp for air and to stare up at the sky.
Wondering if I was going to end up a dead soldier, I said, “I don’t want to see anymore.”
“Don’t be scared. They’re only photographs—photographs of history.”
“I still don’t have to see it.”
“Ian, like it or not, history is all around you.”
My father turned to the back of the book. “Look, here’s photographs of the Wilderness Campaign. Maybe we’ll see grandpa.”
“How can you believe in God if you believe in war?”
“The Bible is full of war.”
“So God likes war?”
“I can’t understand all the things in this world. But if it wasn’t for the Civil War, the North and South would be two different countries. Colored people would still be slaves. Grant would not have written his great memoirs. And without the Revolutionary War, America wouldn’t have become a nation of liberty and of great discoveries.”
My mother walked into my father’s library-like study, looked at me and smiled.
My father went on, “God didn’t create war, Man did.”
“But the Bible says God created man in his own image.”
“Ian’s right,” my mother said.
“He’s not right!” my father insisted. “He’s only twelve. I’ll tell you what: no more war stories for now.”
I looked at my mother and smiled.
She smiled back.
So let me again turn my story toward her.
My mother’s first great joy was raising me and my sister and helping us with our homework. In her soft, beautiful voice she said things like, “Ian you were almost right. You just forgot to carry the zero ... Ian, don’t try so hard at writing. Even simple sentences can have rhythm and words that paint pictures. And whenever you can, try to compare things to other things. For example, you might write that the waves crashed and broke and seemed to turn into bubbly, fallen snow.”
My mother’s second great joy was playing her black, baby-grand piano. When she did, her passion, her spirit flowed through her body and then somehow seemed to change into long, flowing, music waves. The waves bounced off the walls and seemed to give the lifeless air a pulsing heart.
But the waves, I knew, weren’t like those in the ocean. I couldn’t see them unless I closed my eyes. And I couldn’t touch them, even though they often comforted me like a warm blanket.
So did they really exist?
I wasn’t sure, and I also wasn’t sure how I felt about my mother’s drinking. I mean, it wasn’t as if my mother yelled and screamed. But as time passed, as day after day I came home from school and saw my mother sleeping on the couch, I wondere
d why my mother drank when she could instead spend time with me. Was something wrong with me? Or was something wrong with the world?
Whatever it was, I decided to stop my mother’s drinking. I searched the kitchen and found her vodka bottle. I unscrewed the cap and started pouring, but then something—maybe fear, maybe a sense of right—told me to stop. I screwed the cap back on, walked into my room and started my homework. Then a strange thing happened: I cried. When I finally stopped, I promised myself that I would never again cry over my mother’s drinking.
My father came home from work and smiled like a boy who had just hit a home run. He told us he bought a house on East 76th Street, just west of Park Avenue.
I thought of my friends, Benny, Steve, Mario, then stared at my father. “I don’t want to change schools.”
“Half the kids in your class barely speak English. In September I’m going to enroll you into the Browning School For Boys. Ian, in this world a person can’t get anywhere without going to the right schools. One day you’ll thank me, you’ll see.”
I waited for my mother to take my side.
She lifted her wine glass and drank. I wanted to yell that I wasn’t going to a new school, but I was scared of yelling at my father. I looked at my steak and almost cried.
After dinner I went up to my room, rounded up the toy soldiers my father had bought me and threw them into the garbage. Later, after school, I poured my mother’s vodka down the sink.
But still I couldn’t hold back the days, or the spring from turning into summer. We moved.
At first I hated our new house, especially since I had to climb a high staircase to get to my room, but after a few weeks I sort of liked living in a house with so many rooms and so many electric lights. The lights brightened the rooms more than the sun. Before long I didn’t hate walking through Central Park to see my old friends.
But September sneaked up, and my mother took me to a store to buy my new school’s uniform: gray slacks, a maroon tie and a blue blazer with a school patch. I looked at myself in the store mirror and wanted to rip the stupid costume off.
My school was on West 56th Street. It looked more like a big home than a school. The classrooms were about half the size as the ones in my old public school.
The first thing I learned was that none of my new classmates spoke with a funny accent. The second was that my class had two sides: a big side of boys and a small side. The big side was friendly. The small side wasn’t. It was led by Brett Wilson.
Maybe Brett didn’t like that the “new kid” was as tall and as good a baseball player as he was, or maybe Brett was just plain evil. I heard how he shot cats with a BB gun. But in spite of Brett, I made new friends, and as fall turned into winter, I again became happy—then one of my mother’s old music-school friends visited.
“Elizabeth, I’m getting married. Would you like to fill in for me at the vaudeville theater?”
“Vaudeville? I didn’t learn the piano to play while men watch strippers.”
“Some of the comedians are real funny. Besides, it’s only for a week.”
My mother glanced at me. “I have a family.”
I thought, Maybe she’ll stop drinking. “Do it mom. It’s only for a week.”
My mother smiled. “All right, as long as your father doesn’t object.”
My father did. But my sister and I convinced him to change his mind.
And so my mother stopped drinking. And I didn’t mind becoming our family’s dishwasher.
The week passed slowly, finally. During dinner, my mother sat quietly, staring at her food, looking lost.
“Elizabeth,” my father said, “now that you’ll be home after dinner, the house won’t seem empty anymore.”
My mother didn’t look up.
“Won’t it be nice to be a family again?” my father asked.
My mother glanced at me and at Rebecca. “My, my friend isn’t coming back to the theater. I was offered her job.”
“You’re not going to take it!” my father stated.
“I’ve always wanted to play professionally.”
“In a vaudeville theater? How will it look?”
“Look? Who’ll see? The bright lights shine on the stage, not on the musicians.”
“We’re supposed to be respectable. What will I tell my clients?”
“Nothing.”
“Elizabeth, you have two children.”
My mother looked at me. “What do you think?”
Yes, I wanted my mother home, but the job helped her stop drinking.
“Ian?” she asked.
And I wanted my mother’s love. “Can you bring home some real-life strippers?”
“Ian!”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
My father jumped up. “Do whatever you want, Elizabeth.”
My father gave in, I guess, because he too hoped my mother wouldn’t drink again.
But would she?