Miles (2 page)

Home. 
Now there was a real joke for me.  It had been a joke for a few years by
then, but really turned into a laugh-a-minute that autumn.  My home was a
distinctly unmusical one in those halcyon Carter days, in many respects. 
I was bored to tears with the gooey, synthesized mush Top-40 music had become,
and was proud of being the only member of my class that had neither seen
"Saturday Night Fever", nor bought its soundtrack.  All of a
sudden, here came this young bear of a teacher, a real-life
human
teacher, completely in love with all these dead composers who got talked about
and played with openly expressed love, love which flowed right into all of
us.  And that was it for me.  I had become a regular listener to a
small, "mom & pop" classical radio station, and went out and
bought almost every record Nicolasha played in class, much to the chagrin of my
Dad, who had evidently come to the conclusion that a Brink's armored car might
actually go to the cemetery with him when he died, because he resented my
acquisitiveness, or the impermanent happiness the music gave me, I couldn't
tell. 

Our
eyes met again, and I knew.  Nicolasha saw all of this, and let me see
something inside of him, whatever it was.  I was eight years younger than
he was, yet he trusted me, which I thought was pretty cool.
 

The
final bell rang.  The rest of my classmates threw in their papers and
charged out the door to begin the much-anticipated Turkey Day weekend.  I had
put the finishing touches on my last sentence and handed it to Nicolasha, who
stood near me in the doorway, wishing his students an enjoyable Thanksgiving, a
happy holiday, a safe weekend, and a good evening for good measure.  I
gathered my books and put on my Dad's old pea coat while Nicolasha followed
suit with his papers and the KGB-style black leather trench he had worn since
the cold weather began, probably the only piece of clothing he owned that was
worth more than twenty bucks. 

(Nicolasha
had two suit jackets to his name, one grey and the other brown, both tweed and
fallen on hard times, as well as a couple of identical pairs of tight blue
jeans, white button-down shirts, and a few lackluster knit ties, all in earth
tones.  He never wore a belt, or any other jewelry, and had a single pair
of black loafers worn with a series of grey wool socks, all in desperate need
of replacement.  What did he do with his salary, I used to wonder,
gamble?)

"You
played that solo really well, Papa Rozh." 

"It
is one of my favorite Shostakovich melodies.  I could not
resist."  He tucked the violin case under his arm and waited for me
to exit before him.

"It
sure is sad, though.  Are you thinking of home when you listen to
it?"  I peered at the album cover in Nicolasha's brown leather tote.

"Home?" 
He handed me the record.

"You
know,
Russia
," noting the album number in my mind.

We
walked down the cavernous, nearly empty hallway, past a couple of lower
graders, who got patted on their backs and shoulders while they bundled up at
their lockers.  He remained silent until we got outside, where a few
parents waited in their idling cars for their kids.  The sky was already
beginning to darken, and the cold lake wind hit us hard on the face.
 

"It
certainly feels like
Russia
here sometimes!"  His rich, pleasant
voice had only a tiny trace of accent.  I went to give the album back to
him, but he held up an unlined hand.  "You can have that, if you
would like.  I have a different reading at home."

I
smiled happily.  "Are you sure?  This is really cool. 
Thanks, Nicolasha."

He
put his free arm around my shoulders and gave me a gentle cuddle. 
"Happy Thanksgiving."  My eyes closed with a smile as I leaned
into his embrace. 

I
thanked him again and ran off to catch my southbound commuter train.  Up
on the thick wooden beams of the platform, I watched Nicolasha walk slowly
towards the lake, and waved at him when he turned around to glance at
something.  A silver double-decked electric train rolled to a halt in
front of me.  I couldn't see if he waved back.

* * *

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The
turkey was dry and tepid.  The cabbage was strained poorly, the mashed potatoes
weren't mashed very well, the stuffing had too much celery in it, and nobody
looked twice at the lima beans, not even my mother, who prepared the
meal.  A completely inconsequential football game between two teams who
were already out of the playoffs droned on in the background.  Every light
in the living room, kitchen, and family room was on, yet, the small dining room
in which we struggled through the Thanksgiving meal seemed ill-lit. 
Certainly, my spirits were.

I
think my family was cursed.

My
mom, Frederika, was a tall, well-proportioned woman with thick, dramatic brown
hair.  A real hard case, some cop might have said.  As passionate as
she was hard, the kind of passion that let the heart and the soul control a
life that would otherwise have been regimented and accomplished, passion that
remains an anomaly for a pure-bred German.
 

Her
parents gave up a small foundry and the rest of their family in
Saxony
after Hitler took over.  The rest of their relatives died during the
war.  They moved into a small apartment above a bakery in Roseland, the
largely Catholic, multi-ethnic neighborhood on the far south side of
Chicago
. 
Her father went to work at the nearby steel mills, and her mother worked in the
bakery downstairs.  Mom was born a year after that, right there in the
bakery.  She grew up to be a strong-willed, bright woman, raised by the
hard-working women of the bakery.  Grandfather died in an accident at the
mill when she was ten, but they were able to make it through on the last of
their savings and the kindness of the bakery women.

OK. 
When Mom was downstairs one morning, she heard the women gossiping about one of
their neighbors, a Polish laborer with two young boys.  The laborer had
gotten blind drunk the night before, which had been his wedding
anniversary.  Mom was intrigued.  He was despondent over his wife's
death to tuberculosis earlier that year, and confided to the bartender that his
younger boy, Simon, wasn't really his, but rather the illegitimate son of his
sister from
Cracow
, who fell in love with a young German Jew
refugee.  They both died during the war, too.  He had been visiting
Poland
weeks before the invasion, and she gave him her baby to take back to
America
. 
My Mom went to school with Alex and Simon, and had a crush on both of
them.  They were inseparable, but polar opposites: Simon was gregarious
and visceral, tall for his age and wiry, with trim, curly brown hair and eyes,
while Alex was a shy, artistic, private child, somewhat short and
plain-looking.  Their bond was baseball, and they attended almost every
White Sox game together, first with their father, and then alone, as soon as
they were old enough to take the street car to the park.
 

Simon
and Alex came to the bakery one rainy afternoon.  The White Sox were playing
in
Cleveland
, and the ladies had the game on the radio. 
They came to buy some bread for dinner that night, but really wanted to hear
the game.  So, business being slow, the old ladies, Frederika, Simon, and
Alex huddled around and listened with glee as the Pale Hose crushed the Tribe,
10 to 2
. 
The whole time, Simon and Frederika's eyes were never far from each
other.  Before leaving, he asked my mom if she would like to come home and
have dinner with them.  My grandmother waved her off with a smile. 

Mom
and Dad pretty much fell in love that night.
 

High
school went by quickly for both of them: they excelled in their studies, both
competed in sports, and went to a lot of White Sox games with Alex, who really
didn't have any other friends and had a tough time getting along with his
hard-working father.  Alex liked painting and drawing, which weren't very
reputable pursuits to anyone who lived in Roseland, and was a sharp contrast to
Simon, whose sterling academic record and athletic accomplishments had gained
the notice of the local congressman, a big-hearted Machine hack named Kasza,
who also attended too many White Sox games.  Alex's father (and Simon's
guardian uncle) worked for the honorable gentleman's ward organization from
time to time, and Kasza liked the idea of promoting a fellow Pole to one of the
national military academies.  However, the glow of Simon and Frederika's
romance dominated everyone during what always sounded to me to be a warm, happy
time for both families. 

Until
our curse made another appearance.

As
they all geared up for graduation week, one night, a massive fire swept through
the corner bakery, and killed both Frederika's mother and Simon's uncle, who
became trapped in the upstairs apartment.  The entire neighborhood grieved
for Alex, Simon, and Frederika, who spent the rest of that horrible night
crying in opposite corners of Palmer Park. 

Their
adult lives began there.  Alex blew off the cap and gown ceremonies and
took a train to
New York
and fell in with the
Greenwich Village
art scene, where he began to make a name for himself as a painter
and a sculptor.  Simon and Frederika decided to marry, but Simon wanted to
wait until he finished college.  He was overruled by the Machine pol, who
virtually bribed him into marrying beforehand.  So they did, at Holy
Rosary, a small turn-of-the-century Catholic place of worship near the ruins of
the bakery.  
 

Simon
graduated from
Annapolis
in 1962.  I was born a year after
that.  Mom and Dad went back to the old neighborhood to baptize me. 
Uncle Alex was my Godfather.  His second wife was my Godmother.  I
don't even remember her name, and I'm not sure Uncle Alex does, either.  I
saw very little of my dad in my early childhood, since he was a young officer
with the Pacific fleet.  Mom refused to accept life on some drab military
base from day one, so I did most of my growing up in a large Roseland bungalow
"loaned" to us by the now-retired Congressman Kasza.  Mom
enrolled in and struggled to finish nursing school at night while she worked at
the local bank during the day.  Dad got around to resigning his Navy
commission in 1970, came back and moved in with us, and went into law school at
Northwestern a few months later. 

I
swear, my parents were closer when Dad was in
Asia
, writing letters back
and forth almost every day, than when he finally came home.

Both
of them came from families broken apart by some tragedy or another.  They
raised themselves while others worked or became distant memories.  Their
ultimate tragedy was that they became the kind of invisible parents to their
only child that fate had cruelly given to them in their youth. 

Dad
was a smashing success as a brave officer and then as a lawyer, a right
corporate torpedo with a six-figure income, a beautiful wife, a beautiful
little boy, and a beautiful house in the suburbs, an upper-class burg where a
lot of the exiles from Roseland ended up after the neighborhood changed a few
years ago.  And now he had our beautiful life ruin, sitting alongside him
at Thanksgiving dinner, to add to his list of accomplishments.
 

Mom's
natural tenacity and ruthlessness found a home in her nursing career.  She
wasn't content to check pulses and stick needles in the asses of sick
children.  No.  In less than a year, she was not only assigned to,
but running, the night shift at a large inner city Chicago hospital's emergency
room like she was a Kriegsmarine admiral.  I guess you need someone like
that dealing with gunshot wounds and diseases of the poor.  I just didn't
like the cold, driven, Cybernaut mom she became (to spite my absentee Dad, I
often believed).

They
were in the trenches, and had been there once Dad's stud lawyer career was
matched by Mom's stud nursing career.  They were always driven to bigger
and better things, sort of the "American dream" gone berserk - work,
damn you, work!  Make more money!  Be better than everyone else, and
you can have a piece of this rotten pie, this confection of moneyed culture and
cultured money!  (And I say 'culture' like a virus culture, from a lab
that should have been blown to smithereens a long time ago).
 

I
know they saw themselves in my cherubic features, my light sand eyes and small
ears and full lips and long fingers, my test scores, my home runs, and my
growing, terrible loneliness.  I was twice the athlete and the intellect
my parents ever dreamed of being, but half the child.  My parents may have
been alive, I was having dinner with them, but they sure didn't feel that way,
to me.  When I was little, I had every toy and gadget on the market bought
for me at Christmas, which was cool, I guess, and I won't lie that all the
birthday parties at Comiskey Park with my baseball buddies were the best days
any kid like me could ever want, but I had this lawyer who I had to call up for
an appointment to see as my Dad, and this Emergency Room chieftain who could
handle twenty traumas, an overworked staff and green interns with a shrug, come
home and be a crack suburbanite social butterfly while she ignored my silences
and closed doors and late baseball nights off with the aplomb of a true,
upwardly-mobile busy-body.  I'd have given every single one of my things
for either of them to show up one night when I played ball with the local guys,
and maybe even thrown in a few of my Opening Day visits for a joint parental
appearance, since the White Sox usually lost their home opener, anyway. 
You know, just to prove to everyone I had some parents, too. 

On
the rare, latter-day occasions they had put in an appearance together, it was
only by accident.  Like a car accident.  It wasn't at any of my
games, that's for sure.  Maybe that's why I had stopped playing so much,
that junior year.  You always knew when they were within striking distance
of each other, because you could cut the tension in the room with a butter
knife.  The only saving grace to the whole meal was my Mom's homemade
bread, a recipe given to her by one of the bakery ladies.  It certainly
wasn't my feeble attempt to pretend either of them felt like parents anymore.

"One
of my teachers gave me this really cool album yesterday.  Would you like
to hear it?"

"You
mean I won't hear it tonight, when I'm trying to sleep?"  Dad even
looked at me when he spoke.  Wow.  I stared back into his eyes. 
They used to be clear and sharp.  Now they were just haggard and angry.
 

"Maybe
later, baby.  Let's finish eating first."  Why? 
You
don't look like you want to, either, Mom.

"I'm
finished now."  My voice slipped.  It was harsh and
abrupt.  I looked downward at my lap.  All I could hear was a fork
hitting a plate and the football game far in the distance of the family room.

"So
am I, with that sullen attitude of yours."

"Let
it go, Simon.  We're all tired right now."

"Tired
of what, Rika?  You said you were tired of waiting for me to get
home.  Well, I'm home, honey.  Can't I be tired of something,
too?"

"No,
Simon.  Just let the whole Godforsaken thing go.  You're not in front
of a jury that's impressed by you, so ease up on the dramatics
and
my
china."

I
pushed my chair backwards and went to leave the room.  My Dad's tight hand
grabbed my shirt sleeve and pulled me back down.  I kept looking at my
lap.  He wouldn't let go.

"I'll
tell you what I'm tired of, Rika.  I'm tired of my son always walking away
and closing some damned door behind him.  I'm tired of getting home just
in time for him to go out.  And I'm really dead fucking tired of coming
home and feeling like I went through some vortex and ended up back at
work!"
 

I
pulled my arm out of his grip and stared at him with wide eyes.  I felt empty
inside, even though I was stuffed with homemade bread and milk.  Mom
glared at Dad like he was suddenly some alien life form.  My bottom lip
began to quaver.  I had heard them do battle at night, the yelling and
swearing, the occasional broken knick-knack, and the silent meals the next
day.  I heard it coming.  I
felt
it coming, but, when it
finally came, the night we all stared at each other in despair, hurt, and
anger, that barren Thanksgiving night, I felt afraid and alone with the two
people who used to cuddle me to sleep between them in bed. 

Mom's
eyes began to fill with tears of sorrow.  Was that her only
response?  "I'm tired, too, Dad.  I'm tired of both of
you."

His
hand slapped hard across my face.  It sounded like a rifle shot.  The
corner of my lip split on my front teeth.  I let out a single, soft cry as
I landed on the thick shag carpet at the base of the dinner table.  He
never used to touch me when I was little, never, no matter how much of a brat I
was.  But since my teenaged voice changed and Mom and Dad became East and
West Berlin
,
evidently my remarks and responses stopped being cute and started cutting
closer to the bone, and getting me slapped a lot.  I guess I had become
used to it.