Chapter 6
During the next two weeks I often practiced fly-casting on the lawn near West 73rd Street. Izzy, however, never came. One afternoon I stared at his fly rod and felt it had become a part of me, a part that I loved and didn’t want to give back.
I wondered, Should I make up a story and tell Izzy the rod was stolen? No! I shouldn’t even think of stealing from Izzy. He’ll come back and teach me how to become a great fly caster. Yes, I’m sure! But will I ever be so sure that my mother will become healthy again?
I almost became sure. My mother got her appetite back and gained weight. Soon she started going to museums, big department stores, movie theaters, and music recitals. But she always went alone, and she never went to the vaudeville theater to see her friends. I wondered why.
One morning I saw her reading a newspaper story about garment workers picketing the Triangle Waist Company. I said, “Why don’t you go?”
“I don’t think your father wants me seen at a union demonstration.”
“There’ll be a crowd of people. No one will notice you. I’ll go with you.”
“Ian, you have to go to school.”
“Are you feeling tired again?”
“No, not really, Ian.”
I wondered if I should believe her and if the cancer was still in her.
That night my mother sat at the piano and played a Chopin Scherzo. She stopped suddenly and opened and closed her hand. She winced.
“What’s wrong?” my sister asked.
“It’s nothing. My hand will be better tomorrow.”
The next day her hand swelled up. The cancer, we knew, was still inside her.
My father took her to see Dr. Halsted. As I waited for them to come back, I tried to do my math homework but couldn’t concentrate. I closed my book, put Izzy’s rod together and laid it on my bed. Staring at it, I became sort of hypnotized. The rod seemed to glow, brighter and brighter, as if electricity ran through it. Wondering if I were losing my mind, I closed my eyes, but instead of seeing darkness, I saw and heard my mother playing the piano. I opened my eyes. The rod still glowed. Its light warmed me and, surprisingly, burned off my fear of losing my mother like the rising sun burning off mist.
The front door was opened. I ran downstairs. My father was by himself.
“Mother is, is spending the night in the hospital. The doctor—why did this happen to her? Why, Ian!? I love her so much. But God—maybe you’re right, Ian. Maybe there really isn’t a God. Come close, Ian, Rebecca. You’re my children. I want to hug you.”
The next day my mother came home. I hugged her and told her she was going to be all right.
I don’t think she believed me. You see, from that day on, the only book she opened was the Bible. When she was too tired to read, she handed it to me. “Read to me, Ian. It doesn’t matter where. All the stories in the Bible are so beautiful.”
“But what about the war stories?”
“I skip over them.”
I read the Book Of Job. Before I finished the second page, my mother fell asleep. I kissed her cheek and whispered good night.
A few weeks later, the pain in her arm and shoulder got so bad even the pain-killing medicine couldn’t stop her crying; but then the pain stopped suddenly, almost magically, so again I was sure she was going to be all right—until the pain came back, this time for good. My father, my sister and I took turns holding her hand and reading the Bible to her.
It was my turn. My mother sat up in bed and smiled warmly. Her black hair was combed perfectly. Her cheeks and her lips were colored with soft-pink makeup. She looked as pretty as ever. On the night table was a mirror and a brush.
She smiled. “The pain is gone, Ian.”
“See, I told you you’re going to get better.”
“How far are you fly casting?”
“I haven’t been practicing lately.”
“Well you should. Sit down here.”
I sat next to her. She held my hand and said, “I’m sorry for not always being there for you. I guess there were times I, I did have too much to drink. And maybe I shouldn’t have taken the job in the theater.”
“You’re the greatest mother in the whole, wide world.”
“I keep thinking of how you insisted on coming with me and carrying those heavy bags of food to that poor Jewish family. Ian, I know that you’ll always try to make things better for others and that you’ll always try not to fight. But what I don’t know is—can you promise me something?”
“Sure.”
“Promise that you won’t be like me, that you won’t have to get really sick to be comforted by God and to have faith in the world?”
“But mom—”
“Promise me, Ian.”
“I wish I could believe in God.”
“You can. Just look at all the beautiful things in the world: the flowers, the birds, the art.”
In my mind I saw horrible photographs of the Civil War.
My mother squeezed my hand. Looking into her blue eyes, I wondered, To make her happy, should I lie and promise to believe? But if I do, won’t I have to keep lying? Besides, the Ten Commandments, God’s law, say lying is wrong. Maybe, however, I don’t have to lie. There are so many achievements in the world: electric lights, tall buildings, automobiles, new medicines. Yes, good is in the world. That’s why most other people, including my father, believe in God. Shouldn’t I also?
“Yes. I promise.”
“I love you Ian. In the morning I’m going to cook breakfast. What would you like?”
“French toast.”
“Now kiss me good night.”
I kissed her cheek, then went to bed, sure that my mother was going to live to watch me fly cast over 100 feet. Thankful, I pulled the blanket over my head and drifted into sleep.
“Elizabeth!” my father screamed.
I ran into my parents’ room. My mother lay in bed, facing up, sleeping peacefully.
My father looked at me. “Ian, she’s, she’s passed away.”
“No. Look at her! She’s alive! She’s just sleeping.”
“Why, God?” my father yelled. “Why her? Wasn’t she good enough for you? And aren’t my children good enough? Don’t you care about them?” My father cried like a little boy.
I didn’t cry until the next morning. When I finally stopped, I cursed the world and wished I could hold it like a egg and throw it against a wall and break it. Then I cursed God and told myself I would never believe in him, no matter what I had promised.
I won’t trouble you by telling how hard the next year was for me, my father and my sister; so let me just say that my father turned into a stiff-faced zombie. Every night he brought home a stack of legal papers. As soon as we finished dinner, he went into his study, sat at his big desk and read legal papers and law books. He always, however, left the door open. I guess that was his way of not cutting himself off from me and my sister. Often I peeked into his study. His eyes focused on his books and his papers, so he didn’t see me usually; and that was good, because I’m sure he didn’t want me to see him cry. But once he caught me. “Ian! Please don’t spy on me. I’m here if you want to talk.”
I should also say my father changed in another way: He stopped reading Civil War books.
As for myself, I rarely cried. Sometimes, therefore, I wondered if something was wrong with me, or if I really was a bad son after all.
And like my father, I too changed. When I opened my books, instead of seeing pages filled with words or numbers, I often saw myself hitting game-winning home runs, or making tournament-winning fly casts.
My grades fell. At first my father understood. He signed my report card and told me calmly I’d have to do better next time.
My batting average also fell. Strangely, I didn’t care. In fact I was happy when the baseball season ended and the leaves turned orange and gold, and fell and swayed to the ground. Finally I had more time for the one thing that took my
mind off my mother’s death: long-distance fly casting. Day after day, I experimented with different casting techniques, like how high I should hold my casting hand, and how far I could lower the rod tip after my back cast without adding slack.
People often watched; and sometimes I felt like a famous baseball player, especially when someone asked about fly casting. On Fridays I walked to the west side of the park and practiced on Izzy’s old spot, always looking around, always hoping Izzy appeared out of nowhere.
He didn’t. And so, on my own, I discovered more casting techniques, like not rocking my shoulders.
Finally, I cast almost 80 feet, but almost wasn’t good enough. I wondered how I could false cast even more line. It started raining. The rain wasn’t cold. I looked up at the thick, dark clouds and thought that, since I lengthened my casting stroke by lowering the rod tip as my back cast unrolled, maybe I should also lower the tip as my forward cast unrolled.
I false cast. The line rolled in front of me. I lowered the tip about a foot. The line sagged. I yelled, “Damn!”
The rain fell harder. The park, I noticed, was dark and eerie. I prayed, “please sky, no thunderstorms. Give me time. Am I lowering the rod tip too much?”
Again I cast. My forward cast unrolled three-quarters of the way. I lowered the tip about 6 inches. The line didn’t sag! I cast about 82 feet!
Lightning flashed behind a gray cloud. Thunder exploded and echoed, even though the sky didn’t have walls that I could see.
I wondered, Maybe my mother is here with me. Maybe the lightning and thunder were her way of congratulating me. But does that seem possible?
I ran home, again feeling I was on top of the whole, wide world. Later, I got an idea how to make my mother even more proud: I’d go down to Orchard Street and ask Sarah’s sons if they wanted to learn how to fly cast.
The next day, after school, I put on a baseball cap to hide my blonde hair and put on my oldest clothes to hide my father’s money.
Orchard Street looked just as I remembered it—flooded with funny-looking immigrants. I stepped into the flood. No one seemed to notice me. My clothes blended me in. Grateful, I reached 97 Orchard Street and walked up the metal steps, then into the hallway. It was darker and narrower than I remembered but still filled with heavy, heavy, smoke-like air. I went back in time and saw my mother right behind me. She wore her blue dress. I wondered, Is the cancer already inside her? Is she really dead? Am I seeing a ghost?
I asked, “Mom, is that you?”
She didn’t answer.
I dragged myself up two flights of creaking stairs. Softly I knocked on Sarah’s door. It was opened. A heavy, dark-haired woman stood in the doorway. She stared at me.
“I’m looking for Sarah.”
The woman answered in German. I looked over her shoulder, through the inside window. The small living room was furnished differently.
“Do you know where Sarah and her family had moved to?”
The woman answered again in German. I realized Sarah and her family had probably moved to a bigger apartment. Happy for them, I headed home.
My father was home early. His eyes burned like coals. “I was at your school today. Your principal showed me your next report card—a seventy-five in English! Ian, do you want to end up in a city college, full of immigrants?”
“Mom always tried to help immigrants.”
“That’s not the point. Immigrants are starting at the bottom, the way I did—the way you don’t have to.”
“I told you I want to go to a different school.”
“And I told you standing up to people is part of life. From now on you’ll do better at school, and until you do, you’ll do no more fly casting.”
I nodded. I climbed the stairs and walked into my room. Izzy’s fly rod was on my bed. The pieces were broken into halves.
Not feeling anything, I picked up the pieces and fit them together as if they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces joined perfectly, and for a few seconds I was sure the rod wasn’t broken. I lay it on the bed. One of the pieces came apart.
I told myself, Damn him! I’ll get back at him!
I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and found the small jar filled with my savings. I took the money out. Wanting my father to know I ran away, I left the jar on the bed, took my gray wool coat and quietly sneaked out of the house.
The sky was clear. The air was cool but still. I had no place to go. I thought of Izzy and the fly-casting tournament. Even though I knew the bare trees looked like eerie spiders webs, I walked to Central Park, then to the head-shaped cove of the Meer. The rippled water reminded me of small sand dunes. I walked around the coves and saw the end of the long fly-casting dock. The ladder-shaped ropes—the casting lane—weren’t on the water. In their place was a long, sun-paved road of a thousand, small shimmering stars. The stars hurt my eyes.
I decided to walk down the dock and to pretend I was fly-casting in a tournament, but as I walked along the Meer’s bank I saw a high, metal fence in front of the dock. The fence was locked. I kicked it, then pressed my face against it and stared through it. Again I saw Izzy on the end of the dock, in his casting stance.
I wanted to cheer him on but knew cheering for something I saw only in my mind was stupid. I wondered what I should tell Izzy about the rod. I’d be too embarrassed to tell him the truth. Would I be better off, therefore, if Izzy had never climbed down the stone hill?
But still my mother would be dead. And I would know nothing about fly casting.
I sat down on a bench and looked up. Hundreds of faint stars speckled the dark-blue sky. I told myself, Pretty soon the sky will turn black, the park dark. Will God protect me, the way he protected the Israelites by parting the Red Sea? But if the Bible story is true, why didn’t he protect my mother? She was as good as the Israelites. And why didn’t God stop all the wars and protect good, young boys from dying? Soon I’ll be old enough to be a soldier. Will my father still believe in war? I hate him for breaking Izzy’s rod!
I looked at the stars on the water. They had dimmed and no longer hurt my eyes. They floated on the rippled water like fallen leaves, then they started to sink and disappear—or so I thought, because the stars, like a thousand needles, pierced the surface of the sky, then bulged and brightened.
I wondered, Is the sky somehow stealing the stars from the water? If so, it’s all right because in the morning, when the sun rises over the tops of the trees, the water will steal the stars back again.
The lights on the lampposts came on.
Are the lampposts also stealing light? No. Their light comes from electricity. But where does electricity come from? How could something so invisible turn into something so bright? Imagine if the ancient Greeks came back to life and saw electric lights. They would probably think the lights were a sign from one of their gods—a god they can’t see or hear.
Maybe the ancient Greeks and I aren’t so far apart. After all, we saw the same stars—stars that live for millions and millions of years, then die, like people. But do stars just go away? Will I die and just go away? If only I too could live for a million years and see the end of wars and of sickness. Then I will believe in God. But how long will I live?
Seventy years? Eighty? Maybe I’ll live for the same number of years as the number of feet I can fly cast; and during that time millions and millions of people will be born. But how many stars? And how will they be born? It seems impossible that something can come out of nothing, and that with so many stars in the sky they don’t collide and break into millions of pieces. Maybe there are traffic lights and stop signs in the sky. Just how many stars are there? Millions? Billions? And if each star is a sun, just how many planets are there? How many earths? How many gods? But the Bible says there is only one God. If so, why did he choose just our earth? And how does he see us? The stars might be his eyes. Or his eyes might be much closer—maybe even in the park. But can his eyes be in the stars and in the park at the same time? Or am I just trying to fool
myself into believing there is a God and, therefore, into fulfilling the promise I made to my mother?
I lay down on the bench and started counting stars. I got up to fifty, then realized I had lost track of where I had started from. I started over again. Again I lost track. I decided counting stars was hopeless; so I sat up and instead counted the people sitting around the Meer.
I counted only four and realized that soon I would be in the park all by myself, God or no God. And I would get hungry. After all, I was human. And the park would get cold. After all, it was still April. Where can I go to? My old friends? But they haven’t seen me in so long. They’ll see me as a traitor. I have no place to go but home. I should, however, stay out for as long as I can and stand up to my father as a lesson.
I walked to a restaurant and ate a big, juicy hamburger. Afterwards, I went to a bookstore that I knew was open late. I scanned rows and rows of books and—in my mind, at least—I suddenly saw books I had written, even though I had no idea what they were about.
My father waited in the living room. He pointed right at me. “Don’t you ever!”
I pointed back. “One day I’m going to become the greatest fly caster on earth, and then I’m going to teach others. You’re not going to stop me!” I turned and marched up the stairs.