October 15, 2005--Saturday Story: "Uncle Ben's Infected Books"

Uncle Ben's Infected Books

A Battle of the Books raged in my part of Brooklyn. Not Ancients versus Moderns as in Jonathan Swift’s version, but over sexual orientation. This occurred during the 1950s and in truth these matters were not seen in “orientation” terms but rather, in the language of the streets, as the Fags Versus the Real Men. Or at least those whom we thought might be “Real Men.”

To be specific, closer to home, a Battle of this kind was being waged in my Grandmother’s house on Bedford Avenue, though as a participant it felt more like a War than a Battle. On one side was Uncle Ben and perhaps Aunt Madeline; on the other, everyone else. I was up for grabs.

Grandma Zwerling was not much of a stereotypically nurturing Granny type (for example, the only thing I ever recall eating at her house was some lukewarm Campbell’s Tomato Soup) and as a result we visited only occasionally—no food, no visits. Our infrequent visits were more out of obligation than desire. If you have been keeping track of these stories you might correctly assume that I would have been a minority of one in being perversely fascinated by her and her life and in fact took considerable transgressive pleasure visiting Annie (she preferred that we leave the “Grandma” off). That in itself was reason number one why I looked forward to seeing her—she insisted on being Annie not Granny. Number two, she was better known for her prowess in poker than in the kitchen, chain-smoked Camels, cursed like a sailor, and had a voice that could peel paint. And, three, best of all, were the things that came out of her mouth! She must have been in her 60s and was the only adult I knew who talked openly and enthusiastically about sex (more about that in a moment). Up to that time all I knew about sex was what I gathered from stolen glances in The Stork Didn’t Bring You, an unfortunately unillustrated book hidden among a shelf full of Sam Levinson’s books of Yiddish stories in Aunt Tanna’s house.

An additional delicious pleasure for me was to be invisibly situated in the middle of what we today would refer to as a dysfunctional family dynamic. I was so used to seeing family as loving, caring, responsible, self-denying, and morally and ethically conforming, that an hour at Annie’s was a lasting antidote to all the pressure that being a part of such an exemplary version of family required.

And there was one more attractive feature—on the other side of the family, my mother’s side, it was all about the children. To fulfill the promise of America, it was up to the children (my cousins and me) to excel. We represented hope and possibility in this, still for them, inhospitable land. For them, nothing was too much to do for us, to sacrifice for us. Especially to sacrifice, which carried with it nothing less than biblical endorsement (Freud of course would have a different view). But Annie, it was liberating to know, not only didn’t care at all about her own children, she had even less use for her grandchildren. In fact, the only thing she appeared to ever want from me was to keep her coffee cup filled and her ashtray empty. Which I did with assiduous, gleeful abandon.

My father of course was one of Annie’s children as were Aunt Madeline and Uncle Ben. Well into their 40s, they remained unmarried and lived at home with her. Madeline had a version of the same voice. (Actually hers could do more than peel paint—even wood paneling did not stand a chance.)

I was too young and truly innocent to think much about the implications of Ben and Madeline’s unmarried status, even though they were the only adults I knew who remained single. It was represented to me by the non-Zwerling members of the family as evidence of what good children they were (in spite of Annie’s lack of interest in even the concept of children). And of course as an example for me of what it meant to be a good son, even a version of how my own future role would look—not unmarried of course, but as a potential producer of grandchildren and as a devoted son who would make an equivalent kind of sacrifice when my own parents required it.

Uncle Ben was a school teacher at a time when virtually all school teachers were women, but in my obliviousness that didn’t seem worth noting. And the fact that Madeline had a sort of a moustache and bigger biceps than mine didn’t register either.

A typical visit went something like this—

We would avoid arriving at a time when food might be an issue—not at either lunch or dinner time. Though the house had a perfectly respectable front entrance on Bedford Avenue, there was a side door we always used that led from the alleyway directly to the breakfast room off the kitchen. Again, not that there would be any eating, but it was at the head of that table that Annie was rooted, seemingly to me forever, never having seen her anywhere else (she alone among us never once got up to go to the bathroom or for any other purpose).

Whenever we arrived she and Madeline would be engaged in a simultaneous discussion about any number of familiar topics—and by simultaneous I meant that they talked continually and simultaneously. In other words, there was no listening whatsoever going on. Topics included—

Why Ben never spent money on anything except his summer trips to Mexico; why Ben refused to go to “real” doctors, insisting instead on using the HIP HMO which employed doctors from India and the Philippines, none of whom understood or spoke English; why Ben wasted so much time with his friend Mary Brady, who was at least two hundred pounds overweight, had nothing to say, and was, if you can believe it, Catholic; why Ben couldn’t ever seem to discipline his junior high school students who allegedly spent every classroom hour making fun of him (in ways that were only hinted at); why Ben wouldn’t buy a new car, one with automatic transmission so that Madeline could use it whenever she wanted; why Ben insisted, when painting the kitchen cabinets, on giving them 15 coats of Dutch Boy paint when everyone who knew anything at all about paint knew that just three coats would work perfectly well; why Ben spent all his time when at home in the “sun room” at the front of the house, always with his nose in a book or Consumers Report magazine, wasting his money on a CR subscription even though he never bought anything; and why Ben never said a word, literally not one single word ever.

I didn’t have an opinion about the cabinet painting or Mary Brady or his Pilipino doctors, but I sure had a view about why he might not attempt to say even one word. In fact, during at least a dozen years of visits (before Annie died of a sudden heart attack at 3:00 in the morning at a poker game in Flatbush) I think I too never uttered one word while there. Though I did do a lot of listening!

Especially for the umpteenth time breathing in some of Annie’s stories about her brothers Herman and Louie, particularly those tales about their annual escapades up at Saratoga, how after raising money from family members to “invest” in betting on the races held there every August, accompanied by women other than their wives, they would disappear from sight for a few weeks and return under cover of darkness, penniless and bereft of female companionship, seeking shelter and a place to hide in Annie’s attic since some of the “boys” who loaned them money upstate were looking to be repaid, right now, with interest of course.

The single most memorable moment from these stories, which she told between bursts of laughter, was when she reached behind her to open the server drawer to show us Herman’s pistol. Unfortunately, unlike in a well constructed play by Chekhov, it never went off in my presence.

After a Herman-Louie story or two and a dose of Ben complaints (why did he buy auto insurance from Allstate; doesn’t he know they’re anti-Semites?), I would slip away (as if anyone would notice) to join Ben in the sun room. I would find him there, yes, with his nose buried in a book or the latest CR (he had at least a three-foot stack of them piled immaculately on a table beside the two-seat sofa on which he sat). And across from where he sat were his books. Like the stack of CRs, his books were also perfectly arrayed and alphabetically preserved.

I would sit with him, on a chair near the small sofa, afraid to touch a book or magazine; even more afraid to utter a word. He never looked up much less at me, never acknowledged my presence, never offered a word of his own. This went on for years. I’m not sure to this day what I was doing there, what I wanted, how I endured that immobile silence. The only sound was when he turned a page.

I had and have very good long range eyesight and during one visit, from across the room, began to notice and read the book titles—Guadalcanal Diary, Three Years Before the Mast, Robinson Caruso, The Stories of Sherlock Holmes, Tom Sawyer, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Uncle Ben must have sensed this because for the first time in my 12 years he spoke some words to me. Just two. He said, “It’s OK.” More remarkably, I understood.

Under their spell, I got up and approached the books, drawn to them as in a rite. Then touched one, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. And my life changed with that touch.

It was OK I could remove it from the shelf. It was OK I could take it to my chair. It was OK I could open it. It was OK I could begin to read it. And it was OK I could take it home with me.

Later, when we left Annie’s, I hide it in the folds of my winter coat to get it into my bedroom at home without it being noticed. How I knew I needed to steal it into my life that way is something I did not understand at the time but became clear to me very soon. After my father “caught” me reading it. It was so absorbing, the story of Jimmy Doolittle and his boys as they managed to bomb Tokyo very early in the War, at great peril to themselves, having had just enough fuel to fly over the target and to crash land in Burma, it was so engrossing that I didn’t notice my father when he came home one day early from work. I was so lost in the pages that didn’t have time to hide it from him.

He bellowed, “What’s that and where did you get it?” It’s not that I was illiterate or never read books, but all the books I had had access to were books my mother provided or I took out of the library. What was different for him about this one (and for me), and I knew it, was that this was a book from Ben. Therefore, a very different kind of book.

My father saw it to be infected. Infected because it was Ben’s.

A number of un-understood things rushed together in that moment. Ben’s passivity; his gentleness; his sensitivity; his being a school teacher; ah, his singleness; and his love of books. And if his books were infected with Ben-ness it meant that was potentially catching. My father wanted to prevent me from catching Ben’s infection from his books, just as he sent the family upstate during Polio Season to avoid that virus.

Even later, my father attempted to protect me from all books of the kind that Ben treasured; they too might be infected and thus needed to be banned. But my father was too late; that deep look into Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and the world that it and others like it opened to me was an infection I eagerly breathed in. Books had become my life.

So I lived but Annie died.

Within weeks of her death Danny appeared from Mexico and became Ben’s “housemate” for the rest of Ben’s life. He had his own bedroom, Annie’s (!) and slowly became a de facto part of the family. Within a few weeks of that Madeline married the first in a series of husbands, most of whom committed suicide after a year or so of living with her. Thus, the family cemetery plot was getting filled up at such a rate that my father became concerned there wouldn’t be a space left for him. But that’s another story that you might enjoy so I’ll hold it for another Saturday.