I wished I had never asked. The thought of missing made me nervous. “Why don’t you guys use a soft ball then? That’d be playing it safe. That’s what you should do.”
“We can’t afford to do that. The minute we use a soft ball, the fielding gets sloppy.”
“I get it,” I said and smiled. But it wasn’t exactly a smile of relief.
Playboy finally broke up the game. Playboy being the magazine that Franklin P. Botts carried under his arm when he arrived and stood waiting by the fence. The kids crowded around him, and he collected a nickel from each of them. I didn’t have any money with me; you’re not supposed to take money to synagogue on Sabbath. I stretched my head to see if I could get a peek at the fold-out center picture. I knew what she wasn’t wearing, but I couldn’t get close enough to see anything important. I guess Cookie didn’t have any money either.
She told me, “Botts went to camp. Overnight camp. Some rich relative, an aunt or something, sent him. When he came back, he taught us four dirty songs and started buying Playboy. His Little League coach benched him four games last year, one for each song. And this year that coach didn’t bother to pick up his option. But Botts doesn’t care as long as he gets his price. He always charges admission. Some of the kids buy so many looks that they could have bought the magazine in the first place, but I guess they’re always afraid to bring it into the house.”
“Oh, I’d take a look if I had the money. But you can’t take money to synagogue on Sabbath. Synagogue!” I yelled. “What time is it?” No answer. “What time is it? Somebody, what time is it? Somebody? Anybody?”
Botts yelled back, “It’s five after eleven.” He had a watch.
“Oh, boy. Oh, boy,” I muttered as I grabbed my jacket off the fence. The prongs tore the lining a little. “Oh, boy,” I said again as I began to make a dash for it. I had meant to ask the time when I arrived so that I could gauge how long the return trip would take, but I had gotten involved and forgot all about it.
Cookie ran after me carrying my shoes. “What’s the matter?” she called, “you turn into a pumpkin or something at five after eleven?”
Botts laughed. “No, a bagel!” Everyone else laughed, too, although I’d bet that half of them didn’t know what a bagel was.
“His ma’s the manager of our team, the B’nai Bagels,” he said, laughing. Getting up from the center of his group, he yelled to me, “What does b’nai mean, anyway?”
I answered, walking backwards so they could hear me, but so that I wouldn’t lose more time getting home. “Sons of. It means sons of in Hebrew.”
“Then we’re all Sons of Bagels?” one of the twins asked, smiling to his brother.
Cookie was still running alongside me; she kept tossing that hair out of her eyes. “What’s a bagel?”
“What I’ll turn into in about ten minutes.” I turned around and began running sincerely.
I arrived home before the mail and stashed my shoes and mitt in the shrubbery in front of the house to retrieve later. Aunt Thelma’s car was in the driveway. I don’t know why she even has a convertible because she doesn’t like her hair to blow. She must like to put the top down to air out the upholstery.
They were having coffee at the kitchen table when I walked in. The dining room table was covered rim to rim with the records of last season’s games: Mom’s homework.
“How were services?” Mom asked.
“The usual,” I answered. I glanced up at the light fixture before hurrying upstairs to hang up my jacket before the lining got discovered.
“Why,” Aunt Thelma asked as I got to the stairs, “do you allow that boy to wear tennis shoes to Sabbath services?”
I was grateful that I was upstairs and out of sight.
“Allow? I don’t allow,” Mother answered. “He just wore them. Better that he should wear sneakers to synagogue on Saturday morning, Thelma, than that he shouldn’t go at all. I’m sure the dear Lord wouldn’t care if he walked in unshoed.”
“Unshod,” Aunt Thelma corrected.
“Shod? I thought horses get shod.”
“Shod is the past tense of shoe,” Aunt Thelma informed.
“I’m sure the dear Lord wouldn’t care if he walked in BAREFOOTED,” Mother said.
Aunt Thelma sniffed.
I rejoined the family downstairs just as Dad walked in. He started taking off his tie the minute he crossed the threshold. He always did. Dad didn’t have office hours on Saturday; it just seemed that way. He always had to catch up. I guess homework is a way of life for some people. Only they call book bags briefcases when they get older. Truth was, my dad really likes books. He would rather read about a baseball game than see one. That’s a fact. He read the sports page as thoroughly as the international news, but I never saw him throw a ball or watch a game on TV. He wandered toward the dining room table as he was loosening his tie.
“What’s all this, Bessie?” he asked.
Mother called back from the kitchen, “Last year’s Little League records, Sam. I thought they would help, but they’re not too much use. There are so many new players this year.”
Dad began looking over the records, and Aunt Thelma emerged from the kitchen holding her saucer chest high in the palm of one hand and her coffee cup with the thumb and forefinger of the other; her head would dart down now and then, and she’d sip from the cup in a motion that looked like a duck straining water.
Besides books, my Dad’s good at concentrating.
Aunt Thelma sipped again and said, “Hello, Samuel.” Aunt Thelma was the only person who called my father Samuel and my mother Bess. Even Spencer called Mother Bessie, and he wasn’t supposed to.
Dad’s head darted up. “Oh, hi, Thelma. How is Ben?”
“Ben has a head cold.”
Mother erupted from the kitchen before Dad had a chance to answer. “Men with such a little bit of hair should wear hats.”
“What do you mean?” Aunt Thelma asked. “It’s been at least seventy-five degrees out for the past week. Why should Ben wear a hat?”
“Because,” Mother continued, “your Ben is practically—you should excuse the expression—practically bald. And when he perspires, his scalp gets wet and then the slightest breeze and he’s holding open house for viruses.”
“Science has found that there is no relationship between getting a chill and getting a cold.”
“That’s what science has found out for this week, Thelma, but wait five minutes. They’ll find out what our mother always said. That men who are absolutely bald like Ben should wear hats.”
Aunt Thelma sniffed.
Dad continued glancing over the records. He did it very fast, numbers sort of being his business. “It seems that the total in the errors column is extraordinarily high,” he said.
“Well, after all,” Mother said, “this is Little League. We’re not the L.A. Dodgers, you know. Or even the New York Mets.”
“Now, Bessie, don’t get offended. I’m just doing an account analysis. My recommendation to you is to win by cutting down on the errors. Concentrate on your defense for the first part of the season. It doesn’t appear that the other teams have such great batters. And at the beginning of the season, most of the hits were made on errors. Practically every run the Elks Club team made against the B’nai B’rith was a home run. That means a lot of monkey business in the outfield. Errors. My advice to you, Bessie, is to cut your losses by tightening up on defense. Follow that up with batting.”
Mother gave Dad a big kiss. “Sam, you are a genius.”
“I know, Bessie, I know,” Dad answered, looking at Aunt Thelma from under his eyebrows. He was pleased about himself and embarrassed about Aunt Thelma. When Mom was happy with someone, her enthusiasm was awful. You can’t avoid it or even help catching it.
“You see, Thelma, my Sam not only has something on his head: hair, but something in his head: brains.”
“My Ben is no slouch in the brains department, either,” Aunt Thelma answered.
?
??That’s true,” Mother said. “Ben is bright even if he’s as bald as a baby’s backside.”
Aunt Thelma took long enough to set her cup and saucer on top of last year’s records before she marched out of the house.
Mother looked at Dad and said, “What ever did I say wrong, Sam?”
Dad shook his head at Mother and ran after Aunt Thelma, who couldn’t get her car out of our driveway because ours was blocking hers. Dad brought her back.
“I demand an apology,” she hissed at Mother.
“O.K. An apology. I’m sorry that Ben is bald.”
Aunt Thelma threw up her arms and began marching out of the house again. Dad caught her by the shoulders and turned her around. The two sisters faced each other and glared. The air between them growled.
And Aunt Thelma charged, “Good grief, Bess! I want you to be sorry for hurting my feelings, not for Ben’s being bald.”
“Did I hurt your feelings? I didn’t realize.”
“You didn’t realize because you didn’t care. All you care about is having a winning team. Ever since you’ve become manager, that’s all you care about. Is that more important than hurting people’s feelings?”
“What you don’t realize,” Mother said, “is what will be hurt if we don’t have a winning team.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing will be hurt. One of the values of Little League is to teach the boys to win and lose gracefully.”
“Except how can a team learn to win and lose gracefully when all they do is lose? Then they lose something else, too. Their fight they lose; that’s where the hurt comes in. Their spirit gets hurt. I saw it in my own Mark here. At the end of last season he never felt it mattered whether his team even showed up at the ball park. They forgot how to care. I want to do something much harder than teaching them how to win and lose gracefully. I want to teach them to care. I want they should feel rotten when they lose.”
“You want them to feel rotten?” Aunt Thelma repeated.
Mother nodded. “Rotten but not hopeless.”
“If you take Samuel’s advice, you’re going to make them specialists. Offense. Defense. Sounds like platoons in professional football. And you can’t tell me that’s good for Little League.”
“Strategy that is. Training. Discipline. They need that to make caring count. It would be mean to make them care, and then not give them the training to make caring count.”
Aunt Thelma sucked in her breath and added, “I’m not convinced that—”
I interrupted Aunt Thelma in a voice that belonged out-of-doors, “You can’t accuse my mother of being interested only in winning. That’s not true, and I can prove it in two words. Just two words!”
Aunt Thelma, Mother, and Dad all focused on me. I backed up to the wall in the el, swallowed, and whispered, “Sidney Polsky.”
Dad laughed. “The case for the defense rests.” The sisters laughed, too, and it was a good thing. It turned out that we needed Aunt Thelma on our side. And I was surprised at how quickly I had come to my mother’s defense, even though I didn’t approve of her language. (I would have bet that Mrs. Jacobs never even thought that anyone was as bald as a baby’s backside.) It seems I had no trouble with my mother, the mother; it was my mother, the manager, who gave me headaches and doubts.
Eight days later I discovered that it wasn’t Spencer, my brother, who wouldn’t give me any good advice; it was just Spencer, my coach, who wouldn’t. Spencer, my brother, helped me with a difficult personal problem. He actually taught me something.
To begin with I don’t believe that you should try to teach an animal something that is completely unnatural to that animal. Like I always feel uncomfortable when I see poodles walking on two legs on the Ed Sullivan Show. I don’t feel so bad when they heel and sit and obey commands because, after all, everyone likes a chance to show off about how smart he is. But when dogs walk on two legs, I feel the strain. Personally. It’s not natural. It’s not natural either for me to sing. I am a born listener, and even that I don’t do too well since I was born with low fi ears, equipment which is very hard on a Jewish boy about to become Bar Mitzvah. Because it happens that a very important part of your Bar Mitzvah training involves learning to chant—which is next door to singing.
For a normal Bar Mitzvah you have to do these things, solo, in public. The rabbi at our synagogue makes a tape recording of your section of the reading, the haftorah it’s called, and they lend you this tape player so that you can hear it and sing-along-with-rabbi. I was to be pitied. It’s bad enough not being able to sing, but it’s worse not to be able to tell if you’re flat. And it’s even worse to have a class full of guys who can do both. In public school I always faked it by moving my mouth and having nothing come out, but among other things that that Bar Mitzvah year had brought out in public was my low key, off key voice. Sunday mornings was when we practiced our haftorahs. I was considering having mine ghost-sung on tape, but they won’t allow you to plug in any electrical appliances in our synagogue on Sabbath. And my Bar Mitzvah would be then. They always are in our synagogue.
That Sunday Barry had done his usual, sterling job, and Rabbi Hershfield had made his usual observation, “If all of you boys try, you can do as well as Benyamin.” Benyamin was Barry, who was practically a baritone already. Rabbi Hershfield didn’t know about genes, I guess.
Rabbi nodded toward me and said, “Now we’ll hear Moshe. Let’s begin.” Then, as if his eyes suddenly came into focus, he added, “Why did you miss services on Saturday?”
“A virus,” I answered. I was surprised at how easily I did that. Lying in Hebrew School. For just a minute I expected the floor to open and me to drop into the school basement if not someplace lower. Nothing happened, and I looked up at one of the light fixtures to say thanks. Boy, the crazy habits a guy can pick up from his mother.
“What about the Saturday before?”
“It was a twenty-four hour virus.”
“Once a week from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday? Just like the Sabbath?”
“Just like,” I repeated. I felt bad that he believed me so easily. My eyes wandered up toward the light fixture again. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had lighted up and said TILT.
“Do you feel better today?” Rabbi asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you sing?” he asked gently.
“Well, sir, neither of us has thought so until now.”
Rabbi laughed, and so did the rest of the class. Barry and Hersch included.
“Begin,” Rabbi said. He closed his eyes. I think that closed eyes are the mark of a good listener. When I want to really hear something, I close my eyes and open my mouth. Even for TV. It’s not pretty, but it works.
I did my piece, no better and no worse than usual. I sort of whisper-sing. When Rabbi opened his eyes, he looked as if he were going to cry or change his profession.
“You have not been practicing,” he accused.
“I’ve been practicing. In the shower. I sing in the shower.”
“In the shower? Why there? Why do you sing in the shower?”
“Because, sir, Niagara Falls is not available.”
That got my second laugh for the day. Twice out of Barry, too.
“Moshe,” Rabbi said, “you need help. Why don’t you ask your brother Schmuel to help you.” Schmuel is Spencer’s Hebrew name, but you better never remind him of it.
“Yes, sir,” I answered. But I was thinking that it would take more than my brother’s help. It would take divine help. Or a new set of genes. Or both.
Spencer was reading the Sunday New York Times when I arrived home. He had his feet—socks on, shoes off—up on the coffee table. And the Times was spread around him like a bunch of bed sheets after a bad night. I stood in front of him waiting for him to feel my presence, the way they always do in books. He concentrates very hard, my brother. He didn’t seem to feel my presence, so I cracked my knuckles. That worked. He lowered the paper; he needed a shave.
??
?You rang?” he asked.
“Rabbi said that you could help me with my haftorah.”
“Memorize. You have to memorize most of it so that it just looks as if you’re reading it.” He began to lift his paper again.
“I’m not worried about the words. It’s the singing. I can’t sing.”
“No one in our family can.”
“But when I sing, it’s annoying. It’s like the drip of a faucet or the sound of a single fly trapped in the rear window of the car. Annoying. You can’t wait for it to stop. How did you get by, Spence?”
“Dad gave me some advice. I’ll see if you can use the same advice. First, I have to hear you sing. Sing something.”
“Here? Now? In front of you?”
“Here. Now. In front of me.”
“What shall I sing?”
“I don’t care. Sing anything. Sing Deep Purple.”
“What’s Deep Purple? I don’t know Deep Purple.”
“So sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’”
“Naw. You’ll have to stand up.”
“No, I won’t. You just have to stand up in public. C’mon now sing. Oh, say, can you…”
“It’s disrespectful not to stand up if someone is singing our national anthem.”
“It is not. You just have to have a respectful attitude. That’s all you show by standing up. A respectful attitude.”
“You sure don’t look respectable with your beard on your face and your feet on the table.”
“I can feel respectful. And I do, unshaven and unshod as I am.”
“I thought horses get shod,” I answered.
“Also people,” Mother called in from the kitchen. You can hear anything everywhere in that house. “Shod is the past tense of shoe.”
“Just checking,” I called back.
Spencer’s head whipped from me to the kitchen door and back again. “Checking on who—whom?”
“Your Aunt Thelma,” Mother called in from the kitchen.
“What’s Aunt Thelma got to do with all this?” Spencer asked Mother through the wall.