October 13, 2007--Saturday Story: Mt. Lebanon--The End (Part Three)

In Part Two Lloyd threaded his way through traffic across the borough of Queens to Mt. Lebanon, site of his mother’s family’s final resting place. He was struck, as he always was, by the stark contrast between his father’s family plot that was situated in the austere and, if appropriate when describing a cemetery, elegant reaches of Mt. Hebron and the decidedly old-world flavor of the other Mount. But his mother’s world had been more the one in which he had grown up and he always enjoyed the warmth he felt when close to her, her parents, and her brother and sisters. As he was pressed for time—a meeting that included him was about to begin back in the city—he skipped plans to visit his Uncle Eli and Cousin Chuck, though he had important things to ask each of them, and began his visit with his grandparents. His grandmother Frieda questioned him closely about some of the younger cousins, concerned that as a result of the scattering of the family to all corners of the country, a virtual diaspora, they would find themselves not only in danger of losing the closeness that she and her generation had enjoyed and depended upon when they arrived in America from Poland, but they would also find themselves adrift, insecure, and perhaps even in literal danger. Nothing essential had changed, she insisted; and she reminded her grandson that all he and the others had were what remained of their lives, and each other. Just as in the past. So, in Part Three, pressed for time and thus feeling overwhelmed, Lloyd . . . I had just enough time to see my mother and for a quick stop with my father. To get to her, I needed to step carefully over the ivy-crusted grave of my Uncle Hyman which was pressed up close, as he had been, to his in-laws, my grandparents; next I had to pass by where his wife, my Aunt Bertha was situated (ignoring the thistle that was beginning to invade the closely cropped yew that encased the three-sided border of their linked plots—I would tear that out next time if I remembered to bring my leather gardening and cemetery gloves); and then I needed to turn quickly past Uncle Jac and Aunt Helen, to whom my mother was so close during their life times and now. A bit out of breath, and, checking my watch again, in a considerable hurry, I made the excuses I had rehearsed: “Sorry I haven’t been here in a couple of months. I’ve been very busy at work and to tell you the truth I haven’t been feeling that well.” “I knew it. I knew it,” she wailed. “You’re always holding things back from me. If you never tell me the truth I’ll always be worrying about you. I’ll always think something is wrong. Didn’t we agree you wouldn’t . . . ” “Yes, we did. But I didn’t want to worry you. It wasn’t anything serious. Just a stomach virus.” “You’re telling me the truth now? Not like when you had your operations? Then you also said it was just a ‘nervous stomach.’ And look what happened. You almost died. And almost killed me in the process I was so worried. It’s not a natural thing for a child to go before his parents. I don’t know what I would have done. Died of grief or killed myself.” “You did fine, Ma. I was stupid. I ignored the symptoms and got myself in big trouble. But here I am. Feeling like my old self. Better than new!” I tried to put the best face on my situation which had in fact been almost deadly. She never knew the half of it. We strategically decided to tell her the minimum, just that I needed to go to the hospital for some tests and intravenous medication, coldly calculating the value her concern and support would provide against how much of a burden it would be to manage that concern—it was enough to have to deal with just my needs; but we knew there would eventually be a reckoning, which I was now beginning to face. What she never knew was that the infection in my intestines had ruptured the wall of my colon and went on to infiltrate my bladder. It had gotten so serious that, at the risk of being indelicate, I wound up pissing through my rectum and farting and shitting through my penis. The surgeon, who I eventually found my way to, said that the damage was so extensive that it was unlikely I would survive. But after three operations and five hospitalizations here I was at Mt. Lebanon, on my feet. The place reserved for me there was still miraculously unoccupied. “Rona told me that you almost committed suicide.” Until then I hadn’t realized that she knew about this. “That you were in Europe and in so afraid that you wrote a note that she found and that she confronted you with. Learning from it for the first time how sick you were. You lied to her too, didn’t you?” It was true, but I had nothing convincing to say back to her that would make it better, make it go away. I was two years later still so tortured by guilt and now remorse that all I could whisper was, “I know what I put you through. Both of you, who have been so wonderful to me. I wish I could . . . ” “Forget about me. I was old and almost dead and had seen many terrible things. But how could you have done that to her? My wonderful Rona.” Since for that I had no acceptable answer I tried to shift the subject. “I did stop to see Grandma and Grandpa, your parents.” Knowing she would like to hear this, I told her how I had brought them news about the family--just as she used to do—including a good report about one of her favorites—Eric. “I’m so happy you did that.” I remembered how she always smiled when I visited in Florida and would fill her in about those cousins with whom I kept in touch. Not as many as she would like—she would press me to do better and I would have to resist lecturing her about how times were different and how most of us had scattered to form families and lives of our own. But she would wave that off and remind me, as her mother just had, about how all we had was each other. “But what have you heard about Ruthie’s children? And her grandchildren?” “You know, Ma, we’ve talked about this in the past, though I loved all our time with Ruthie when we were growing up, in recent years we haven’t been that close.” I chose not to tell her that it had been at least ten years since I had seen or spoken with her because this would not sound to her like anything resembling being “close”—much less “that close.” To my mother, this would seem to be exactly what it was—complete estrangement. But since I did hear secondhand reports about her from her brother, Murray, with whom I had maintained a truly close relationship, I tried to pass them off as if I had obtained them more directly from Ruthie herself. “I can tell you that Susan, her daughter [“I know who she is thank you.”] is a very good businesswoman and with her father [“Paul.”], yes him, they started a car service company. [“This they did more than five years ago”—I knew this was not working]. Well, yes, it’s true, that was some time ago but . . . ” “This is enough of a report from you. With my parents you can maybe get away with this kind of fibbing. But not with me. I know too much and you too well. You are not doing what I expect of you. The first-born of a first-born.” Was she mocking me? “As such, it is your responsibility to maintain the family. I love you very much, this you know, but about this I am disappointed.” She had never spoken this directly to me much less expressed disappointment that was so profound. At most she had corrected me for minor breaches of etiquette, for not opening the door for one of my aunts, or, rarer, gently rebuked me for neglecting to speak proportionately to all of the elderly relatives at a Passover Seder. But never had there been anything like this. And as a consequence, feeling, frankly, unfairly chastised—what after all was so terrible about the little dissembling I had done: hadn’t I as her Number One Son, out of concern for her, done this to avoid upsetting her?—but nonetheless shaken by her rebuke, I slumped onto the nearby bench. “And there is something else even more important I need to tell you.” Something else that is more important and to tell me, not discuss? What could be more important than criticizing me for being a failure as the first-born of a first-born? Thankfully seated, feeling faint, I clutched at myself to keep from toppling to the ground. “I hear what you’ve been saying, I mean writing about your father and me.” I had no idea where this was headed but began to tremble. “You make him sound like such an ogre.” I had indeed published a story, loosely derived from reality, about the rage he felt, the impotence he experienced when her brother, who was financially the most successful of our relatives, had bought his sisters washing machines so they would no longer have to scour our underwear by hand on a washboard in the kitchen sink. Perhaps I had exaggerated the extent of his anger and frustration, she might be right about that, but I thought that doing so had made for a better story. And I had changed all the names. “But you know, Ma, this is what I do now. I always wanted to write and now that I finally have the time I did my best when I wrote, in a disguised way, about the Malones and the Zazlos. I tried always to do this with respect and love.” As these words spilled out of me I felt nausea in addition to the dizziness, caused, I was certain, by the fact that I was again trying to get away with a half-truth. In much of my more personal fiction I attempted to do the opposite—I had tried to cut through the family pieties of closeness and sacrifice to expose the raw nerve of competition and even jealousy that defined and dominated so much of their lives. Yes I knew that some of this family mythologizing was to protect us, the children, from the harsh realities of discrimination and the deprivations of post-war life. But still, there had been so much schmaltzy writing, glop really, published about the proverbial Jewish family, especially the all-sacrificing Jewish mother and her tirelessly laboring husband--all for the sake of their children’s future—and though some of these clichés, like all clichés, were derived from truth, some minimal truth, in many real situations, in many actual families, mine included, I came to see and understand what else was churning, and being obscured, in the sentimental haze. I had no illusions that anything I had produced, or ever would produce, would be equal to that of any of the great writers who spoke about the need to cut through these deceptions to get to the deeper truth, no matter how noble some of the roots; but through the persona or alter ego I had invented, I hoped he, Lloyd Zazlo, would add at least, perhaps a footnote to what we have learned from Stephen Daedelus or, much closer to my home, Nathan Zuckerman. While sitting there on that cemetery bench spinning and, confessedly, enjoying these soaring thoughts, I almost missed hearing my mother when she resumed: “You did not know him as I did. Of course not. How could you?” It was as if she were whispering to herself and I was unexpectedly there to overhear her. “I didn’t get pregnant until eight years after we were married. So how old were you when you feel you really began to know and understand him? Ten? Twelve at the earliest? By then he was at least forty and much, too much had happened. And changed him.” Thought not expecting this change of direction or tone, I felt certain what she was now recounting was going to be a good source for my work and so I leaned closer, moving as imperceptibly as I could, to make sure I did not miss a word. If only, I thought, I had brought my notebook. “I know this will surprise you, maybe shock you since you think of me as an old and shriveled woman, but the first time I saw him he was not wearing a shirt. I will never forget that glimpse of him. And if I believed in love at first sight, which at the time I did—I was just seventeen--I knew that I loved him.” I wasn’t shocked at all—I had seen pictures of him taken at about that time and he was handsome in an Errol Flynn sort of way; and with his perfect pencil-moustache, as best as one could tell from the grainy images, almost as sexy. “We didn’t live near each other, actually in many ways we came from different worlds. His father had money and they had an elegant house on Bedford Avenue in one of the best parts of Brooklyn. It was made of brick. This was before my parents had saved enough money to buy their own house, which was really more a place for the entire family and friends to live and sleep for a few nights as they passed through New York from Europe on their way to getting settled elsewhere. And they were all born in America. While we were immigrants. Even I, the youngest, was born in Poland and arrived in this country at Ellis Island. “The Zazlos’ house had a backyard and a garden in front with flowers. We had a third-floor walkup on Pacific Street in Brownsville. A railroad flat. I didn’t have a bed of my own until I was sixteen. But we did have hot water. So how then could we meet, your father and I, and how come I saw him that first time without a shirt?” I was wondering that. “He had this wonderful car. It was his, not his father’s. A gleaming black convertible that I think he must have waxed every day. It had a white canvas top and whitewall tires. He kept them spotless. I can still see that car. My parents never had one. “On that day, it was a hot day—two days before my birthday in June--he was on his way to visit a friend from college. A fraternity brother. Victor Herbert was his name. Like the composer. That’s why I remember it. Victor had two first names—‘Victor’ and ‘Herbert.’ My Papa said only gentiles had two first names. Your father had gentile friends. I didn’t know anyone else who did. He was a student at Brooklyn Polytechnic, studying to be an engineer. So he could go into the Zazlo family business with his father and uncle. It was a good business. They installed skylights and ventilators in apartment houses all over Brooklyn, and even in Manhattan. They had money. But I already told you that.” “I did know that. I’m sorry I never met dad’s father. He died so young.” “Yes, he did. At only forty-eight. He was a very gentle man. He wrote poetry, if you can imagine a Zazlo writing poetry, special poems for every birthday and anniversary. Even when someone died. Your father’s mother, on the other hand, was a cigarette-smoking, card-playing, hard-drinking woman who could curse like a man. Actually, she was more like a man than a woman. Which was another issue in the Zazlo family.” She paused for a moment. “You of course know about your Uncle Ben?” “I do. I mean I did. I liked him. I think I was the only one who did. Every else made fun of him. Because of what he was. But he was the only member of that family, until Madeline much later, who paid attention to me. He gave me books to read. It’s because of him, I always felt, that I came to love books and literature. And Dad always thought that because of that I’d ‘turn out’ just like him. That I’d become, he would spit out the epithet, a fag!” Now I paused to recall the pain of that. “But you were telling me . . . ” I wanted to bring her back to that day when she met my father. That hot day when he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Yes, I was telling you about that day. He was driving through my neighborhood to visit his friend Victor who lived with his family in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. It had three floors. The occupied all of them. Just Victor, his younger brother, and his parents. They all had rooms of their own. But I’m digressing again. I was telling you about how your father loved to take shortcuts. So on that day he drove through Brownsville, which was the shortest route from Bedford Avenue, where he still lived with his parents, to the Herberts. And just as he was racing down my street, Pacific Avenue, wouldn’t you know it, he had a blowout. The car jumped the curb right in front of our house and knocked over two ash cans! What a mess he made. I should have known from that what other messes were in store for us.” I could hear the excitement as she recalled this remarkable act of fate but was more eager to learn about the messes. I had been a witness to many of those. “I was sitting on the stoop, which I did whenever it was that hot, to catch a breeze, and doing my homework assignment. I even remember that I was reading Silas Marner, by George Eliot, who I think was really a woman, though they didn’t tell us that in my day.” “Mom,” I interrupted, “this is all very interesting but I have to get back to the city soon and was hoping you’d tell me more about meeting Dad.” “That is what I’m doing. But this is how I tell my stories. You have to be patient with me. This is not easy for me. To remember those days.” “I’m sorry. I understand. But, please, tell me more. I’ll make the time.” So I’ll be a little late for my meeting, I thought. They can begin without me. “Before I could see exactly what had happened to his car he was standing on the street and already taking off his shirt—it was a splendid shirt, crisply ironed and full of starch. And then one, two, three he had the car jacked up and was putting on the spare tire. As I said, it was very hot and though he did this effortlessly his arms and that part of his chest I could see were glazed with perspiration. This emphasized the shape of his body. It was a beautiful body. He was an athlete and very masculine, but also beautiful. I don’t know what got into me but, as if in a trance, I got up off the steps on which I was sitting and was pulled toward him. I stood over him as he bolted the tire in place, watching his rippling back. When he was done he arose from his crouch and almost bumped into me. Not the least bit surprised or startled, as if this happened to him every day, he looked directly at me, now having to look down as I had to do when he was working on the tire—he so towered over me—and said, ‘My don’t you look splendid.’ He stood there with his greasy hands on his hips, breathing heavily and still wet all over, not caring if he soiled his trousers, and just smiled radiantly. Not saying another word. I almost swooned—I am prone to that—but managed to say back to him, ‘You look thirsty. Can I get you a glass of water?’ He didn’t respond or even nod. All he did was hold me with his eyes. “I raced up the stoop and then up the three flights of steps to our apartment, filled a glass with water from a pitcher in the icebox, and ran back down to him as quickly as I could, fearing that while I was gone he would have looked more carefully at my house and my street and, realizing this was not his part of town, would have driven away, back to his friends who lived in his world. But there his remained, I was ecstatic to see, wiping his hands on a rag he retrieved from the trunk of the car, and came over to me, took the glass I held out to him and sat down on the step where I had been and looked over at the book I had been reading. He gulped down the water in a single swallow and said, ‘This is a novel isn’t it? To tell you the truth, I hate novels. I like my science and engineering courses well enough, and love to read about sports, but I almost failed literature.’ He grinned at me and shrugged his shoulders. ‘But I bet you like these kind of books. Most girls do.’ And in what would be the first of thousands of accommodations to him, though I loved to read and George Eliot was one of my favorites, I said, ‘They’re OK. But I also like science,’ which was more than an accommodation since I always struggled with anything that involved math. “I know you’re busy and have to get to the city; so, if you’d like, we can talk more about when I first met your father next time. But let me quickly tell you before you race away, and I hope I’ll see you next time sooner than between this visit and the last one, that your father and I began seeing each other two days later. It was a Saturday and your father took me to a party at his fraternity house where I met Victor and all his other friends. And we arranged to be together every other every Saturday for months after that. I couldn’t tell my parents I was seeing him. Though his mother and father were Jewish, they were not the kind of Jews my parents considered real Jews—they never went to synagogue and didn’t keep a kosher home. To them, they were the same as goyim. Maybe worse. “But I couldn’t get enough of him. During the rest of June and through July I continued to see him, having to lie about where I was going on Saturday nights. And all during that time I couldn’t get the first sight of his glistening arms and chest out of my mind. But before the end of that summer, one night he drove us to Brighton Beach, I saw all of him and he saw all of me in the slivers of moonlight that filtered through the slates in the boardwalk under which he had spread a blanket and took me into his golden arms.” At this recollection I heard her chuckling to herself. Though I was tempted to ask for more details about his golden arms and what that moonlight exposed and must inevitably have led to, even in that more repressive time, I decided to let my imagination fill in the rest of that part of the story, thinking it could do at least as good a job as whatever the reality itself might reveal. Her imagination after all was captured by the sight of his beautiful body and he clearly was similarly interested in hers; and by choosing to see him covertly she was as risk-taking and transgressive as any “fast” young American girl of her era. It had to be a good story which I could shape and tell in my own way at some later date. But with the time that remained, I wanted to hear more about what had happened, what had transformed that enchantment into their life with which I was familiar. So I said, “This is a remarkable and beautiful story. I can only imagine how happy you must have been, how he made you feel. But as you said, I didn’t ever see or know this version of Dad. The one I knew was when he was older and many things must have happened between your first meeting, the Saturdays with his friends, and especially that night at the beach. I mean, he was so different when I knew him, and I am wondering what . . .” “This is fair to ask,” she cut me off, “but first you must know a little more about what he did for me. What he meant to me.” “I do want to understand that. I do.” To be continued . . .