Donald told us about one of the boys who had been in his junior class at Townsend Harris. His name was Sigmund Miller. He lived in Yorkville, the German neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and he was a fascist. “Considering that the school was almost one hundred percent Jewish, he was pretty brave about it,” Donald said. Sigmund Miller would explain in class discussions why he was for Hitler. He got beat up repeatedly after school. But Donald was telling this because of what happened subsequently. Donald and Bernie and Irwin and Harold Epstein and Stan Mazey all went together to high school every morning. They met at the corner and walked across the Concourse and down Mt. Eden Avenue to the Jerome Avenue El. One morning on the train a man was reading the Daily News. Sigmund Miller’s picture was on the front page. He had murdered his girlfriend. He had made a suicide pact with her, but after he killed her he had not been able to keep his part of the bargain. “Excuse me,” Stan Mazey said to the man reading the paper, and yanked it right out of his hands. “I think a friend of ours just killed someone.”
“Why would they want to commit suicide, your friend and this girl?” I asked at the dinner table.
Donald looked at my mother. “She was pregnant,” he said.
My mother said, “I don’t think this is appropriate conversation for dinnertime.”
I was offended. “You think I don’t know what pregnant means?” I said to her. “I can assure you, I know exactly what it means!” Then I was doubly offended because everyone laughed, as if I had said something funny.
TWENTY-TWO
It was winter now and the sky grew dark early in the afternoon. My father came home from work in the darkness with the cold blowing off him like the breath of his coat and hat. Donald came home each night with his books under his arm, his nose red and his eyes glittering with the cold. Even now I had pains where my scar was—lesions, the doctors called them. I played out of doors very little. I was not supposed to exert myself. My scar was long and I examined it every day. It was a thick raised welt slanting from my side down toward my testicles. At the top of the scar and at the bottom were depressions, dips in the skin, where the drains had been placed. These were the tenderest spots of all, and when I touched them I could feel my insides cringe. So people who went out into the world of German war, fearless of the Nazis on the dark streets of New York, had my admiration. I had changed physically since the operation; I had been a lean wiry little boy, very well coordinated, I was never a fast runner but I could throw gracefully and catch and get some fair hits in punchball or stickball. All that was gone. I was shaped like a pear, I was overweight from all those weeks in bed, and physically shy of my own movements. I was always afraid of tearing something, I did not like to jump around or leap down from the wall in the backyard as I had once done in my Zorro games with my friend Bertram; it was as if I still had stitches in me, I could sometimes feel them, and the terrible awful feeling when they had been removed, I could feel them as they had been snipped by the doctor and I could feel the gut string pulling through my flesh. I had nothing to counteract my tendency to fat. If I wasn’t afraid to run around, my mother was afraid for me. She had very quickly gone grey at the temples. She looked at me worriedly and fed me as if I were still convalescing even though I had long since gone back to school. I ate lots of junket desserts and lots of eggs and slices of buttered bread and thick soups of chicken stock and beef with potatoes and cabbage and vegetables of all sorts. I drank lots of milk, it came now homogenized, which meant you didn’t have to shake the bottle to distribute the cream evenly. I had to eat hot cereal in the morning, Cream of Wheat or oatmeal, even though I preferred Post Toasties or Kix. And since I didn’t move around very much, my whole being was changed, I had grown taller and bulkier, I still had a sunny smile and a handsome countenance, but also a double chin. I tried to compensate for this by combing my hair in a way Donald combed his, with a pompadour in the front. Mine didn’t stay up for very long, I was never allowed to let my hair grow long enough to make it really work. Donald as a college freshman grew his hair longer and combed it carefully each morning and in the evening too when he came home from school. In fact, when he didn’t have anything else to do, Donald went to the mirror to comb his hair, running the comb through it, and propping it and patting it with his other hand till it was the way he wanted it. He was these days dignified and soft-spoken and serious, as befitted a college student. He no longer wore knickers, he wore long trousers pleated and with slightly pegged cuffs. He wore a chain from his belt to his side pocket. Outside the house he affected a straight briar pipe, which he clenched in his teeth on one side of his mouth. He never smoked it, that I knew, he just clenched it. Our relationship was changing. At seventeen he now hovered at about twice my age, and took on the coloration of a father rather than an older brother. He showered every day. He offered me less instruction because our interests no longer coincided, but appeared more and more in my eyes as a model to be emulated and studied. In the evening, when he got home, he listened to the fifteen-minute sports broadcast of Stan Lomax, who with great thoroughness rattled off all the minutiae of collegiate sports with heartening references to the New York city colleges and institutions that were disdained by the other sports news authorities. Stan Lomax dealt with the football fortunes of Brooklyn and City colleges with the same judicious objectivity as he mentioned the University of Michigan or the Minnesota Gophers or the Duke Blue Devils. Donald liked that. He had the fervent pride of the assimilationist, as we all did. Listening with him, I envisioned gothic campuses of idyllic rusticity, as if the sports scores were stories being told. Elegant young football players with names like Tommy Harmon strolled across tree-lined quadrangles in their slacks and argyle sweaters and two-toned shoes with pretty coeds in pleated skirts and angora sweaters by their sides. In their conversation they quietly admitted to having scored the winning touchdown. There were no books and no lectures in these visions of mine. What was essential to them was that same dusk of winter, that late afternoon of cold hard air and leaves spinning down from the plane trees of the Bronx streets, produced by the clouds of World War Two. I liked in my house circles of lamplight surrounded by rings of darkness that grew in depth the farther out they went. I liked the shelter of a desk lamp, feeling toward it Bomba the Jungle Boy’s affection for his campfire in the roars of the dark surrounding night.
TWENTY-THREE
Yet actual football, as opposed to the symbolic game, we preferred, as it was performed by professionals. This was a trait we learned from our father, who had discussed how much better and livelier the pro game was than the collegiate version. There were two teams in New York, the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. They had the same names as the baseball teams but were not related. For some reason my father liked the Dodgers, he admired their quarterback, whose name was Ace Parker, and two linemen, Perry Schwartz, an end whom he thought almost as good a pass catcher as Don Hutson of the Packers, and a terrific tackle named Bruiser Kinard. Donald and I made the Giants our team. We had Tuffy Leemans in the backfield, along with Ward Cuff, Hank Soar, and the passer, Ed Danowski. On the line was the iron man Mel Hein, at center, and two great ends, Jim Lee Howell and Jim Poole. That was a team. Everyone played both offense and defense, Mel Hein usually played the whole sixty minutes without a substitute, Ward Cuff dropkicked field goals and Hank Soar could be counted upon for at least one interception when he was back at Safety on defense. When the Giants played the Dodgers, fans of both teams showed up at the park.
One Sunday at about one o’clock my father decided to take us to a Giants-Dodgers game. Donald said, “We’d just as well not even try, we’ll never get in, people started lining up for seats early this morning.”
“Let’s just give it a shot,” my father said. My mother made us sandwiches and a thermos of hot chocolate. She claimed she was tired and would not mind being by herself for a few hours by way of placating Donald’s and my guilt at leaving her alone on a Sunday. We knew Sunday was the only day my father was
at home. For his part he seemed to have no cares leaving her.
Wrapped up against the cold November day, the three of us boarded the subway and rode down to 155th Street, and came upstairs in the shadow of the El outside the great steel-girded Polo Grounds. My heart sank. The streets were packed. The game was less than an hour from kickoff and immensely long lines of people were in front of the ticket kiosks. My father told Donald and me to get in line, just to keep a place, even though we knew it was likely the game would be sold out before we ever got to the booth. Saying he would be right back, my father disappeared.
All around us hawkers were selling pins and pennants, and bags of roasted peanuts. I really wanted one of those football pins, miniature footballs painted golden brown with painted laces attached to a ribbon with each team’s colors, blue for the Giants, silver and red for the Dodgers; but I didn’t want to be thought of as a baby. The footballs were made in Japan and you could pry them, like walnuts, in half at the seams. We could hear the crowds roaring inside the stadium as the teams warmed up. Occasionally we heard the sound of a punt. Our line inched forward with tormenting slowness. What could be worse than being on the outside and hearing cheers rise from behind the ballpark walls? The El pulled into the station overhead, and people came running down the stairs. The sidewalks overflowed; people ran and walked in the streets between the cars. I developed that specific prayerful longing that went with these situations: If we got into the game, I said to myself, I would do my homework every day for a week the minute I got home from school. I would help my mother when she asked. I would go to bed when I was told to.
Taxis kept pulling up and discharging passengers. Occasionally I saw a limousine polished to a black shine, with one of those open driver’s seats and with white sidewall wheels and glittering chrome radiators and headlamps, and a running board trimmed in new grey rubber. The chauffeur would run around to the sidewalk door and out would step elegant women in fur coats and men in belted camel-hair coats, the collars turned up. They carried leather cases, which I understood were filled with flasks of whiskey and picnic delicacies, and they carried plaid blankets to keep warm, and some of them were recognized by people in the crowd, who called to them. They waved, smiling, as they passed through the gates. One or two older men in black coats and homburgs were saluted by policemen on guard. I saw in these sportsmen, I derived from them, information of a high life of celebrity, wealth, and the careless accommodation of pleasure. I understood that these people were politicians and gamblers first and sportsmen second. Something in their attitude appropriated the occasion. It was theirs. The team was theirs, the ballpark was theirs, and I, standing with my runny nose and muffled to invisibility in a buffing crowd of heavy-coated football fans on the outside and waiting to get in—a momentary swatch of color at the edge of their field of vision—I was theirs too. I felt all this keenly and became angry. Someone jostled me and I pushed back with my elbow.
Then there was a commotion in the street. One of the ticket booths had closed its window and put the sold out sign behind the little iron bars protecting the opaque window glass. The crowd at this kiosk dissolved noisily, there was shouting, and people invaded the lines at the other windows not yet shut down. Policemen were running toward us from the street and from under the concrete stands. Another elevated train thundered in.
“It’s almost game time,” Donald said, and just then another roar went up and our line dissolved into a swirling pushing angry mass. He was exasperated. “Where’s Dad,” he said. “We’ve come here for nothing.”
At this moment, as we stood bewildered and feeling bruised with disappointment we heard a voice—“Don, Edgar, over here!” My father was waving to us at the edge of the crowd. We pushed our way toward him. “This way,” my father said, his eyes alight. In his hand he held three tickets spread out like cards. “What!” we said, finding it hard to believe. He’d done it! From one moment to the next he led us from despair to exhilaration through the turnstiles and up the ramp into the bright sunlight of the stadium.
Ah, what a moment, coming out into the raked tiers, seeing with my own eyes the green grass field, the white stripes, the colors of the two helmeted teams deployed for the kickoff. Tens of thousands of people roared with anticipation. Pigeons flew into the air. The game was about to begin!
Incredibly, my father had gotten tickets for the lower stands on the 35-yard line. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. It was magic! His face was flushed with delight, his eyes widened and he pursed his mouth and puffed his cheeks like a clown. We were no sooner seated and the game was under way than he looked around and spotted an usher; five minutes later we were in even better seats, farther back in the section, where with some altitude we could now see the whole field clearly. “What do you think of this,” my father said, smiling at us in triumph. “Not bad, eh?” He loved this sort of situation, the suspense of getting in just at the last moment. The game meant more now, more than it might have if he had purchased the tickets a week in advance.
There was no question we were witnesses to a momentous event. The two teams struggled back and forth on the field. We groaned or cheered as the pass was caught or the punt dropped.
Donald and I followed the game intensely, cracking peanut shells and chewing and frowning and offering each other extended critiques of the action. My father was more calm. He smoked his cigar and every now and then closed his eyes and turned his face up to the afternoon sun.
The Giants were in blue jerseys and the Dodgers in red and silver, and both wore the sectioned leather helmets that came around the ears, and the buff-colored canvas pants, and the black high lace-up shoes. When the sun went below the roof level of the upper stands, long shadows fell across the field and across our faces. The changing color of the day brought new moods to the game, new fortitude and desperation to the embattled lines, as the backs slashed off tackle or did their line bucks, as the centers hiked the ball and the backfield ran in box formation and compacted into their handoffs and laterals and blocks, and ran and threw from their scattered single wing. They were well matched, you could feel their effort, you heard the thudding leather of their shoulder pads. The dust flew up in the planes of sunlight as they fought on the dirt part of the field, the baseball diamond. My father did not passionately root for the Dodgers. It seemed more important to him that the score remain close. Donald and I wanted the Giants to pull ahead and win without any equivocation. Something happened to the sound of the game; the dimming light seemed to give it distance. Ace Parker punted the ball for the Dodgers and it rose in a looping spiral high over the tops of the stands; then I heard the sound of his shoe hitting the football.
In the late afternoon, dusk falling, the game ended, with the Giants winning by one touchdown. Everyone cheered. The two teams walked together toward the small bleachers at the end of the field and climbed the stairs under the scoreboard into their locker rooms. They held their helmets in their hands. Fans leaped over the bleacher walls and called to them. People flowed onto the field. We made our way down. It was awesome to tread in the black grass, with the marks of the cleats visible like traces of battle. It seemed to me a historic site. It was a hard cold ground. A wind blew in from the open backs of the stands, which now stood silhouetted, a great horseshoe-shaped shed, little light bulbs glittering dimly in each section of the upper and lower tiers. The air down here on the field was pungent with the cold. It smelled electric. I apprehended the awesome skill and strength of the football player. Boys ran through the crowd, dodging and dashing about like halfbacks, with invisible balls under their arms. I walked with my brother and father to the field gates, passing under the scoreboard and out to 155th Street. Here the milling crowds, the gabble, the horns of taxis, the rumble of trains, and police on horseback blowing their whistles brought my mind back to the city. We were hoarse and tired. The day was over. We pushed our way down the subway steps into the crowd on the station platform. We jammed into the train, the three of us forced together, packed
tight in the train and barreling toward the dark Sunday night, when even the arguing stopped and there was stillness, and a cessation of all striving, my night of unnameable dread, that most mysterious night of the day of rest.
TWENTY-FOUR
The winter was to be a bad one. I woke up one night to hear my mother and father arguing. They were all the way at the other end of the house but I could hear her clearly. She was saying he had lost the store. I heard his voice then, but not the words, only the tone of earnest entreaty. He spoke a long time.
“Undercapitalized, my eye,” she answered. “You’ve gambled it away. When you should have been taking care of business, you were out playing cards, running around and being a big shot. And Lester meanwhile was stealing from you.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Rose,” my father said.
“I know full well,” she said. “Yes, of course these are bad times, but other people survive. They’re competitive. They pull in their horns. They cut costs, they do not give credit, they buy on consignment—don’t tell me how to run a business. If I were in charge you wouldn’t be in the trouble you’re in now.”
I fell asleep while the argument went on. But in the morning everything was as it had always been. My father went off to work. Donald went off to school. My mother gave me my breakfast and asked me if I had done all my homework.
The issue I understood as the way each of them thought. Something was wrong, but my father seemed to think he could set it right and my mother was telling him it was too late to make things right. I heard pieces and bits of this argument over several weeks, sometimes late at night, sometimes allusively, right in front of me at the dinner table. My mother’s voice rang with prophecy. She spoke as if something had already happened when it hadn’t. This I resented especially, as I knew her to be more realistic. He still had hope. He insisted things were to be done and I couldn’t entirely believe him, but I resented that she would not honor his intentions, she would not take them seriously. “Don’t hand me any of your cock-and-bull stories,” she said. “What bank is going to lend you money with the books you’ve kept.”