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THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I'VE MET
She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in transforming herself. Invariably she was already in the kitchen by the time I arrived, and setting out my milk and cookies. Instead of causing me to give up my delusions, however, the feat merely intensified my respect for her powers. And then it was always a relief not to have caught her between incarnations anyway- even if I never stopped trying; I knew that my father and sister were i
Of course, when she asked me to tell her all about my day at kindergarten, I did so scrupulously. I didn't pretend to understand all the implications of her ubiquity, but that it had to do with finding out the kind of little boy I was when I thought she wasn't around-that was indisputable. One consequence of this fantasy, which survived (in this particular form) into the first grade, was that seeing as I had no choice, I became honest.
Ah, and brilliant. Of my sallow, overweight older sister, my mother would say (in Ha
And how did my father take all this? He drank- of course, not whiskey like a goy , but mineral oil and milk of magnesia; and chewed on Ex-Lax; and ate All-Bran morning and night; and downed mixed dried fruits by the pound bag. He suffered- did he suffer! – from constipation. Her ubiquity and his constipation, my mother flying in through the bedroom window, my father reading the evening paper with a suppository up his ass… these, Doctor, are the earliest impressions I have of my parents, of their attributes and secrets. He used to brew dried se
To make life harder, he loved me himself. He too saw in me the family's opportunity to be "as good as anybody," our chance to win honor and respect-though when I was small the way he chose to talk of his ambitions for me was mostly in terms of money. "Don't be dumb like your father," he would say, joking with the little boy on his lap, "don't marry beautiful, don't marry love-marry rich. "No, no, he didn't like being looked down upon one bit. Like a dog he worked-only for a future that he wasn't slated to have. Nobody ever really gave him satisfaction, return commensurate with goods delivered- not my mother, not me, not even my loving sister, whose husband he still considers a Communist (though he is a partner today in a profitable soft-drink business, and owns his own home in West Orange). And surely not that billion-dollar Protestant outfit (or "institution," as they prefer to think of themselves) by whom he was exploited to the full. 'The Most Benevolent Financial Institution in America" I remember my father a
Also, he believed passionately in what he was selling, yet another source of anguish and drain upon his energies.
He wasn't lust saving his own soul when he do
They laughed at him, down in the slums. They didn't listen. They heard him knock, and throwing their empties against the door, called out, "Go away, nobody home." They set their dogs to sink their teeth into his persistent Jewish ass. And still, over the years, he managed to accumulate from The Company enough plaques and scrolls and medals honoring his salesmanship to cover an entire wall of the long windowless hallway where our Passover dishes were stored in cartons and our "Oriental" rugs lay mummified in their thick wrappings of tar paper over the summer. If he squeezed blood from a stone, wouldn't The Company reward him with a miracle of its own? Might not "The President" up in "The Home Office" get wind of his accomplishment and turn him overnight from an agent at five thousand a year to a district manager at fifteen? But where they had him they kept him. Who else would work such barren territory with such incredible results? Moreover, there had not been a Jewish manager in the entire history of Boston amp; Northeastern (Not Quite Our Class, Dear, as they used to say on the Mayflower ), and my father, with his eighth-grade education, wasn't exactly suited to be the Jackie Robinson of the insurance business.
N. Everett Lindabury, Boston amp; Northeastern's president, had his picture hanging in our hallway. The framed photograph had been awarded to my father after he had sold his first million dollars' worth of insurance, or maybe that's what came after you hit the ten-million mark. "Mr. Lindabury," 'The Home Office"… my father made it sound to me like Roosevelt in the White House in Washington… and all the while how he hated their guts, Lindabury's particularly, with his corn-silk hair and his crisp New England speech, the sons in Harvard College and the daughters in finishing school, oh the whole pack of them up there in Massachusetts, shkotzim fox-hunting! playing polo! (sol heard him one night, bellowing behind his bedroom door)- and thus keeping him, you see, from being a hero in the eyes of his wife and children. What wrath! What fury! And there was really no one to unleash it on-except himself. "Why can't I move my bowels- I'm up to my ass in prunes! Why do I have these headaches! Where are my glasses! Who took my hat!"
In that ferocious and self-a
I remember-to go back even further in this history of disenchantment-I remember one Sunday morning pitching a baseball at my father, and then waiting in vain to see it go flying off, high above my head. I am eight, and for my birthday have received my first mitt and hardball, and a regulation bat that I haven't even the strength to swing all the way around. My father has been out since early morning in his hat, coat, bow tie, and black shoes, carrying under his arm the massive black collection book that tells who owes Mr. Lindabury how much. He descends into the colored neighborhood each and every Sunday morning because, as he tells me, that is the best time to catch those unwilling to fork over the ten or fifteen measly cents necessary to meet their weekly premium payments. He lurks about where the husbands sit out in the sunshine, trying to extract a few thin dimes from them before they have drunk themselves senseless on their bottles of "Morgan Davis" wine; he emerges from alleyways like a shot to catch between home and church the pious cleaning ladies, who are off in other people's houses during the daylight hours of the week, and in hiding from him on weekday nights. "Uh-oh," someone cries, "Mr. Insurance Man here!" and even the children run for cover- the children , he says in disgust, so tell me, what hope is there for these niggers' ever improving their lot? How will they ever lift themselves if they ain't even able to grasp the importance of life insurance? Don't they give a single crap for the loved ones they leave behind? Because "they's all" going to die too, you know-"oh," he says angrily, " 'they she' is!' " Please, what kind of man is it, who can think to leave children out in the rain without even a decent umbrella for protection!