ever invite Mama on a Sunday? Did they ever invite Billy? I went into my room and closed the door, but it was no good, it was too interesting. It was as if my father had caught my grandma’s point of view, just as my mother insisted.
But then he offered a criticism of my mother that I knew, in part, to be accurate. “You always think the worst,” he said. “You’re suspicious and distrustful.” She told him to go to hell. He called her a fishwife. Mythic realms were indeed the territories of these disputes. Ascriptions of good and evil flew back and forth like furies, like phantoms, to take shape as sweet truths or malign imputations. Truth hovered above everything waiting to alight, and as I grew older I saw that it never did anywhere, forany length of time. I felt guilty that I preferred the company of my grandma and grandpa up on the Concourse to my sick little grandmother in the room next door. I sometimes saw my grandma Gussie as truly mischievous, jealous and up to no good. But I could not believe anything bad about any one of these people for very long, because they all seemed to love me so much.
TEN
I n fact, love was what it was all about. However painful it might be, as sure as heat or freezing cold or storms were in the nature of weather, the daily tempest of my life among these elemental powers—the screams, demands, disagreements—was the nature of love. But they had their sly ways: I secretly grieved for the dark mysterious things my parents did in the privacy of their relationship. I didn’t know quite what these things were, but I knew they were shameful, requiring darkness. They were never referred to or acknowledged in the light of day. This aspect of my parents’ life lay like a shadow in my mind. My mother and father, rulers of the universe, were taken by something over which they had no control. How problematical that was, how unsettling. Like my little grandma with her spells, they were afflicted in the manner of some kind of possession, and then afterwards they seemed to be normal again. I could not talk about this to anyone, certainly not my brother. If he didn’t know about it he was lucky. The devastating truth was that there were times when my parents were not my parents; and I was not on their minds. It was not a subject to dwell upon. I resented the early hour of my bedtime, in part because it was earlier than anyone else’s bedtime, in part because it brought on that vast period of darkness when those things happened about which I had insufficient knowledge; I could only make do, like a detectivewith the barest of clues, inaudible words, an indefinable sound of panic, a dim light, going on and off, all of it enfolded and obscured in my sleep-drugged state.
But I was coming to rely on my brother in some way that my parents’ vehemently intense life together did not allow me to rely on them. Donald was steadfast. He lived his earnest life as one human being, not as half of two. He was still within reach. He taught me card games, easy ones like War and Go Fish, and a hard one, Casino. We played on the floor, where I was comfortable. He held my hand as we walked to the candy store. He was at home when my parents went out at night. The sight of Donald doing his homework suggested to me the clear and purposeful intention of life and its march to a visionary future. He would soon be graduating from P.S. 70 and going on to high school. He was now thirteen or so. Painstakingly, with his characteristic frown of concentration, he constructed airplane models of balsa wood, as light as feathers, and hung them on sewing thread from the ceiling of our room—snub-nosed racing planes, and a Ford Trimotor. The skins on the wings and fuselage were thin colored papers stretched taut by dampening. He was also building a solid wooden Strom-Becker model of the China Clipper. He read Popular Mechanics and pulp detective-story magazines, and in a magazine called Radio Craft , which my father had brought
But then he offered a criticism of my mother that I knew, in part, to be accurate. “You always think the worst,” he said. “You’re suspicious and distrustful.” She told him to go to hell. He called her a fishwife. Mythic realms were indeed the territories of these disputes. Ascriptions of good and evil flew back and forth like furies, like phantoms, to take shape as sweet truths or malign imputations. Truth hovered above everything waiting to alight, and as I grew older I saw that it never did anywhere, forany length of time. I felt guilty that I preferred the company of my grandma and grandpa up on the Concourse to my sick little grandmother in the room next door. I sometimes saw my grandma Gussie as truly mischievous, jealous and up to no good. But I could not believe anything bad about any one of these people for very long, because they all seemed to love me so much.
TEN
I n fact, love was what it was all about. However painful it might be, as sure as heat or freezing cold or storms were in the nature of weather, the daily tempest of my life among these elemental powers—the screams, demands, disagreements—was the nature of love. But they had their sly ways: I secretly grieved for the dark mysterious things my parents did in the privacy of their relationship. I didn’t know quite what these things were, but I knew they were shameful, requiring darkness. They were never referred to or acknowledged in the light of day. This aspect of my parents’ life lay like a shadow in my mind. My mother and father, rulers of the universe, were taken by something over which they had no control. How problematical that was, how unsettling. Like my little grandma with her spells, they were afflicted in the manner of some kind of possession, and then afterwards they seemed to be normal again. I could not talk about this to anyone, certainly not my brother. If he didn’t know about it he was lucky. The devastating truth was that there were times when my parents were not my parents; and I was not on their minds. It was not a subject to dwell upon. I resented the early hour of my bedtime, in part because it was earlier than anyone else’s bedtime, in part because it brought on that vast period of darkness when those things happened about which I had insufficient knowledge; I could only make do, like a detectivewith the barest of clues, inaudible words, an indefinable sound of panic, a dim light, going on and off, all of it enfolded and obscured in my sleep-drugged state.
But I was coming to rely on my brother in some way that my parents’ vehemently intense life together did not allow me to rely on them. Donald was steadfast. He lived his earnest life as one human being, not as half of two. He was still within reach. He taught me card games, easy ones like War and Go Fish, and a hard one, Casino. We played on the floor, where I was comfortable. He held my hand as we walked to the candy store. He was at home when my parents went out at night. The sight of Donald doing his homework suggested to me the clear and purposeful intention of life and its march to a visionary future. He would soon be graduating from P.S. 70 and going on to high school. He was now thirteen or so. Painstakingly, with his characteristic frown of concentration, he constructed airplane models of balsa wood, as light as feathers, and hung them on sewing thread from the ceiling of our room—snub-nosed racing planes, and a Ford Trimotor. The skins on the wings and fuselage were thin colored papers stretched taut by dampening. He was also building a solid wooden Strom-Becker model of the China Clipper. He read Popular Mechanics and pulp detective-story magazines, and in a magazine called Radio Craft , which my father had brought
Similar Books
