helplessly weeping for all that went up in that explosion. Righteous anger at the daughter? No doubt that would have helped. Incontestable that nothing is more uplifting in all of life than righteous anger. But given the circumstances, wasn't it asking a lot, asking the Swede to overstep the limits that made him identifiably the Swede? People must have been doing that to him all his life, assuming that because he was once upon a time this mythic character the Swede he had no limits. I'd done something like that in Vincent's restaurant, childishly expecting to be wowed by his godliness, only to be confronted by an utterly ordinary humanness. One price you pay for being taken for a god is the unabated dreaminess of your acolytes.
"You know Seymour's 'fatal attraction'? Fatally attracted to his duty," Jerry said. "Fatally attracted to responsibility. He could have played ball anywhere he wanted, but he went to Upsala because my father wanted him near home. Giants offered him a Double A contract, might have played one day with Willie Mays—instead he went down to Central Avenue to work for Newark Maid. My father started him off at a tannery. Puts him for six months working in a tannery on Frelinghuysen Avenue. Up six mornings a week at five A.M. You know what a tannery is? A tannery is a shithole. Remember those days in the summer? A strong wind from the east and the tanning stench wafts over Weequahic Park and covers the whole neighborhood. Well, he gets out of the tannery, Seymour does, strong as an ox, and my father sits him down at a sewing machine for another six months and Seymour doesn't let out a peep. Just masters the fucking machine. Give him the pieces of a glove and he can close it up better than the sewers and in half the time. He could have married any beauty he wanted. Instead he marries the bee-yoo-ti-full Miss Dwyer. You should have seen them. Knockout couple. The two of them all smiles on their outward trip into the USA. She's post-Catholic, he's post-Jewish, together they're going to go out there to Old Rimrock to raise little post-toasties. Instead they get that fucking kid."
"What was wrong with Miss Dwyer?"
"No house they lived in was right. No amount of money in the bank was enough. He set her up in the cattle business. That didn't work. He set her up in the nursery tree business. That didn't work. He took her to Switzerland for the world's best face-lift. Not even into her fifties, still in her forties, but that's what the woman wants, so they schlep to Geneva for a face-lift from the guy who did Princess Grace. He would have been better off spending his life in Double A ball. He would have been better off knocking up some waitress down there in Phoenix and playing first base for the Mudhens. That fucking kid! She stuttered, you know. So to pay everybody back for her stuttering, she set off the bomb. He took her to speech therapists. He took her to clinics, to psychiatrists. There wasn't enough he could do for her. And the reward? Boom! Why does this girl hate her father? This great father, this truly great father. Good-looking, kind, providing, thinks about nothing really but them, his family—why does she take off after him? That our own ridiculous father should have produced such a
brilliant
father—and that he should then produce
her?
Somebody tell me what caused it. The genetic need to separate? For that she has to run from Seymour Levov to Che Guevara? No, no. What is the poison that caused it, that caused this poor guy to be placed outside his life for the rest of his life? He kept peering in from outside at his own life. The struggle of his life was to bury this thing. But could he? How? How could a big, sweet, agreeable putz like my brother be expected to deal with this bomb? One day life started laughing at him and it never let up."
That was as far as we got, as much of an earful as I was to hear from Jerry—anything more I wanted to know, I'd have to make up—because just then a small,
"You know Seymour's 'fatal attraction'? Fatally attracted to his duty," Jerry said. "Fatally attracted to responsibility. He could have played ball anywhere he wanted, but he went to Upsala because my father wanted him near home. Giants offered him a Double A contract, might have played one day with Willie Mays—instead he went down to Central Avenue to work for Newark Maid. My father started him off at a tannery. Puts him for six months working in a tannery on Frelinghuysen Avenue. Up six mornings a week at five A.M. You know what a tannery is? A tannery is a shithole. Remember those days in the summer? A strong wind from the east and the tanning stench wafts over Weequahic Park and covers the whole neighborhood. Well, he gets out of the tannery, Seymour does, strong as an ox, and my father sits him down at a sewing machine for another six months and Seymour doesn't let out a peep. Just masters the fucking machine. Give him the pieces of a glove and he can close it up better than the sewers and in half the time. He could have married any beauty he wanted. Instead he marries the bee-yoo-ti-full Miss Dwyer. You should have seen them. Knockout couple. The two of them all smiles on their outward trip into the USA. She's post-Catholic, he's post-Jewish, together they're going to go out there to Old Rimrock to raise little post-toasties. Instead they get that fucking kid."
"What was wrong with Miss Dwyer?"
"No house they lived in was right. No amount of money in the bank was enough. He set her up in the cattle business. That didn't work. He set her up in the nursery tree business. That didn't work. He took her to Switzerland for the world's best face-lift. Not even into her fifties, still in her forties, but that's what the woman wants, so they schlep to Geneva for a face-lift from the guy who did Princess Grace. He would have been better off spending his life in Double A ball. He would have been better off knocking up some waitress down there in Phoenix and playing first base for the Mudhens. That fucking kid! She stuttered, you know. So to pay everybody back for her stuttering, she set off the bomb. He took her to speech therapists. He took her to clinics, to psychiatrists. There wasn't enough he could do for her. And the reward? Boom! Why does this girl hate her father? This great father, this truly great father. Good-looking, kind, providing, thinks about nothing really but them, his family—why does she take off after him? That our own ridiculous father should have produced such a
brilliant
father—and that he should then produce
her?
Somebody tell me what caused it. The genetic need to separate? For that she has to run from Seymour Levov to Che Guevara? No, no. What is the poison that caused it, that caused this poor guy to be placed outside his life for the rest of his life? He kept peering in from outside at his own life. The struggle of his life was to bury this thing. But could he? How? How could a big, sweet, agreeable putz like my brother be expected to deal with this bomb? One day life started laughing at him and it never let up."
That was as far as we got, as much of an earful as I was to hear from Jerry—anything more I wanted to know, I'd have to make up—because just then a small,
Similar Books
