New Moon (3 page)

Its other side was enchantment—green sprinkled cookies and bagpipe parades on Saint Patrick’s Day, solid chocolate eggs and coated yellow marshmallow Peeps at Easter, orange and black gingerbread men of Halloween with their raisin buttons. Each of those tastes and colors was a land on a sacred calendar through which I was led in rapture and to which I returned aeons later in the journey of the sun.

My records were yellow circles: shepherds in Bethlehem, a beguiling caterpillar on his mushroom, tinder-box dogs with saucer eyes, loquacious rabbits and frogs—charmed creatures in a medley of songs. In my mind Tweedledum and Tweedledee were chubby decorated ones to whom “God rest ye merry gentlemen” was addressed.

I played among colors of my singing top, fright clown of jack-in-the-box, shaggy mane of rocking horse; making buzzing noises for trucks and trains, blowing a yellow whistle in a sink filled with water so it warbled like the bird perched on it. I set rubber knights on tops of houses amid plastic trees, wedged Indians and
soldiers onto horses, and planted them on carpet in forays of battle. I tumbled them, twisting and bumping their forms. I opened packages of game cards and spread them on the floor, rooster and elephant and mouse.

Pulling our sled by a string, Daddy took me on the Avenue. Sunshine sparkled so that I could barely keep my eyes open. The world was etched in exquisite detail, my breath making cartoon puffs. Pigeons purred, their feathers clean as pins, gray and white, an occasional black one. Awnings were heaped with the aftermath of snow, doormen trying to beat it down with brooms. Smoke rose from a chestnut vendor at the entrance to the park, roasting stones in his pot.

We climbed a hill. Inside mittens my fingers glided along a railing, slapping poles. Daddy climbed over and I ducked under. People were whizzing—one to a sled, two, three, and four to a sled, tumbling in their heavy coats.

Daddy kneeled on the flyer boards and then lay down, instructing me to get on his back. I hesitated but finally crawled onto his rough camel’s hair and balanced myself there. He told me to put my arms around his neck. Stale tobacco from his coat enforced an unusual intimacy.

He began slowly, then accelerated as I gripped tight. He hollered exultation, ice crystals splattering my skin as he pumped his body and urged our frame a little further, a little further.

On the walk home, sounds of bells and metal runners evoked gaiety, store windows peopled with puppet villages, music everywhere: “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosty,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” I sat on the living room floor, moving Uncle Wiggily’s yellow and blue chalkmen across their kingdom of squares.

I got sick for real and was put in Mommy’s bed. I felt strangely protected by its power. Dr. Hitzig viewed me there, running fingers down my cheeks and neck and along my back. He wrote something on a sheet of paper, told a joke in Yiddish, said “Mazel tov” to Daddy, and left.

I was fed spoonfuls of horrible-tasting medicine, “Myocin,” like dead mice ground up. I went to the hospital, “to have your tonsils
out. They will give you something to drink … and you will go to sleep…. ”

The serum was sweet bubbles. I tried to fight, but those in white surrounded me. It seemed as though it might already be the end of life I had been here so long.

I awakened abruptly with a sore throat, gargling and spitting. The nurse insisted I drink a tiny cup of pineapple. It hurt so much I could barely swallow.

In the summer of 1950 I was sent to a camp in Pennsylvania called Swago. I lived in a cabin with ten other boys and Bob, our counselor. He would wake “bad” kids in the middle of the night and paddle us with a slipper—the number of blows dependent on our crimes. “Violations” included talking during silent time, spilling food at a meal, being late for activity, leaving clothes on our beds, and wetting. I was pulled from sleep again and again, swatted and dragged back. Night became a labyrinth in which I forgot how often I woke and whether I was summoned or dreamed I was.

Bob warned me to say nothing to my parents. He hung close to us on visiting day. Still I whispered it to my mother.

“That couldn’t be true,” she snapped, “but I’ll speak to the director.” Afterwards she told me it was my imagination.

She brought a glider with a propeller wound by a rubber band, slices of balsa wood for the wings, and a green plastic nose. The plane could go higher than the propeller-less gliders we threw. It travelled beyond imagination, chugging gracefully through sky, landing far away. No one had seen a prop-driven glider before, and even big kids came to watch it sail over fields.

At twilight we took turns throwing our planes in the air and chasing them. One swooped back into our group, its wing crushed under our feet. Bob strode into our midst pointing at me. “You broke it,” he yelled. “You give him your plane.” Sorrowfully I went back to the bunk, took it from my cubby, and handed it over.

That evening I began coughing and coughing and couldn’t stop. I was brought to the infirmary and put to bed. I lay there for days. They said it was whooping cough. Plates of hospital
food came and went. Sun shone in the bushes beyond. I heard the shouts of games.

Then Daddy came in his car and got me and took me to the Nevele Hotel, his advertising account. I was filled with joy and relief when I saw them all again. I couldn’t believe they were real—Nanny kissing me, Jon such a big boy.

I have one other memory from Swago: the frog. In coins of dispersed sunlight at the bottom of a pool…. “Catch him,” I pleaded. An older boy dove down through the water. I saw his fingers reach out as the frog sprang. He grabbed its legs in his hand. He set it in a coffee tin and handed it to me. I looked at it resting there in bright silver in undulating ribs of light … and I am still looking at it, alive and green, legs extended, the water unimaginably clear.

That fall I began school at a strict French academy on Fifth Avenue, but I wet in class, so I was switched to P.S. 6 on Madison. There we painted from jars of colors onto easels, built block villages, and scuffled in circle games at recess. Balls from the bigger kids’ games rolling into our midst were booted back.

When a bell rang, we lined up quickly and proceeded in rows onto the street. This was fire drill.

There was also an air-raid siren. We crawled under our desks and covered our heads with our arms, the teacher warning of invisible radioactivity and broken glass flying across the room.

Nanny met me after school. We shopped for groceries at Novack’s Market. While she read her list I followed Mr. Novack around. With a long stick ending in a “hand” he plucked boxes of cereal and crackers, cans of vegetables, juices, and soups from higher shelves. These would be delivered to our apartment.

One Saturday afternoon our family drove across the Hudson to Palisades Amusement Park. I was placed in a chair on a carousel. It began to go fast and zigzag. I got dizzy. I struggled out of the clamp but was thrown to the ground. Amid shouts the ride stopped and they led me off.

I had heard a wordless directive: no way am I going to be tricked into marching down the aisle and putting my neck on the executioner’s stone again.

In the spring P.S. 6 held a fair. Colored paper hung from the walls, and booths of cookies and toys filled the recess room. I knew I couldn’t visit them all, so I hurried from thing to thing, rolling marbles into holes, betting coupons on paper horses, aiming balls through rubber-band mazes around nails in plywood. With a dollar I bought a book called
The Dragons of Blueland.
On its cover a boy in a red and white striped shirt hugged a blue and yellow striped creature above its tiny yellow wings. The dragon had a tiny red horn and was soft and pudgy and hugged back. All about them five-pointed yellow stars filled midnight blue.

I carried this prize everywhere. I loved to stare at its map—the train headed to Nevergreen Village, a church with a steeple, tiny cottages, the lighthouse offshore, a snake elevating himself onto a cactus, cows sleeping on either side of a squiggly river that wound into mountainous cones, dragons perched on their peaks, a single one blimp-like in flight.

Nanny read me the story at bedtime—how Boris the baby dragon found his family trapped in a cave, enlisted Elmer, and flew him on his back over the Spiky Mountain Range. My favorite picture showed the family of dragons: spotted, calico, banded, and decorated; tumbling, leaping, peeking at their tails through their legs, hopping over one another, rolling onto their backs, and prancing human-like on two legs. In a two-page illustration crossing the fold, all the dragons burst from the cave, bounding and taking flight. The bad guys scattered. A few ended up in the water amid floating hats.

I adored the dragons of Blueland, and I wouldn’t let Nanny say a word against them or deny their likelihood (as she was wont to). Blueland was immutable. Lying in bed, I imagined the wind against my body as I flew on my dragon’s back.

The morning after we moved to our summer cottage in Long Beach, I got lost again. Mommy wanted to see the ocean, so we
pushed my brother until pavement turned to sand. Waves uncurled and crashed into bubbles in sand.

The stroller stuck. After yanking so hard that she fell down, Mommy sent me to fetch Nanny. “It’s only two blocks,” she pointed back. “Don’t get lost.”

I had never been sent on my own before.

Men trimming our hedges made the house look unfamiliar, so I walked past it, street after street. The scenery became city-like. I began to cry.

I stopped where workmen in uniforms were cleaning up. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but I didn’t know what else to do. One of them offered to take me in his truck. I climbed into the high seat.

We drove up and down streets, searching for where I lived. “Does this look familiar?” he kept asking. But it was all new.

Then I saw it—two police cars parked outside, Mommy on the porch. As I got out, she was yelling at them to arrest the man.

I had the feeling of reentering my life again from the outside.

Day after day, I played by the ocean as it crashed in. I sat in the foam with my toys, raking sand into a sieve, collecting and washing broken shells in a Bugs Bunny pail, digging channels and holes for the water to swirl into. I made sand castles and waterways and watched real vessels cross the horizon. I turned my back and let the crash surprise and knock me down. As I lay in the suction of retreating water, yummy salt filled my nose and mind.

My wind-up plane buzzed on tin pontoons. I would let it go, then rush through the tide to recapture it.

On the way home we went into a beach-house and showered off the sand among naked men. I was overwhelmed by the stale aroma of their flesh. The horror was that they were so wrinkled they were almost dead, the drain collecting their skin and hair.

I vowed I would never get that old.

Then Daddy visited his college friends Moe and Nook. Beside a rotating sprinkler Nook’s wife, Aunt Alice, served us lemonade. As they laughed and teased, I stared into the jewel-sparkled grass, greener than any I had seen. Uncle Moe pretended to punch Daddy in the
arm, then said, “You’re quite the man about town with your dame.”

Daddy laughed and answered with something that sounded like “your hazz-a-rye.”

“You make a dashing couple,” Aunt Alice declared. “Your pizzazz and her high carriage. She’s a drink of water, your Frenchie.”

“She’s got a simmer of Rita Hayworth,” remarked Moe, “a bit of Ava Gardner too.” They were talking about Mommy, but their meaning didn’t come into focus until years later.

“Of course this here schnook’s no louse,” bellowed Nook. He didn’t seem aware that “schnook” rhymed with his name. “He cuts the figure of Cary Grant, got the moves of Astaire, voice of Jolson. You blue-eyed Jew, you cur you, Towers!”

“I know the shtick,” Daddy said. He began to dance back and forth in place. “Give’m a little this, a little that, a little this, a little that.”

“Go, Turetsky,” shouted Aunt Alice, “go!” I knew the circusy sticklike word used to be Daddy’s last name.

We climbed the steps to the boardwalk and walked along the row of amusement stands. Ignoring shooting galleries, balloons and darts, and turtle races (because Daddy said there was “only one real game here”), we spent our time at Skee-ball alleys, their shelves packed with different-sized stuffed animals and porcelain objects to be garnered by coupons over many visits, the higher the row the greater the number of points needed for them. Daddy helped me roll wooden balls toward pockets with numbers. Targets were rimmed circles inside of larger rimmed circles; the smaller ones made the most points: forty and fifty.

The balls were rough and solid, well worth the attention. We got ten at a time. At the insertion of a coin and yank of a lever they came clanking down a tunnel.

I loved their clatter, the release of new ones, the snugness of their plunk into the center hole, the near misses into adjacent ledges.

The moon huge over trees, I pulled sticky paper off a popsicle and sucked its sweet ice,
“The old accordions playing, a sentimental tune…. / Cruising down the river, on a Sunday afternoon.”

These events seem no further from me now than a month ago or fifty years ago. The agenda has not changed.

The rusty submarine, the dungeon, the ride at Palisades Park recall the horror. Toys and records recall the enchantment, Christmas lights and snowy hills the wonder. Life was as gentle and speechless as the squirrels who came from behind bushes to take nutted shells in their paws. I was vague as the vastness of the City, its edifices turning to silhouettes against twilight.

What is missing is a quality that lies beneath these details, the cauldron of reality at their core.

When I approach this realm now, I find the barest mists of sensation, its ambiance vast but diffused. There is no relief or scale by which to identify what actually happened.

I sense a white miasma. It is gaunt as snow, or cream on my mother’s face. Ghosts surrounding my hospital bed are the white miasma. They glisten and shift in particles. I emerge amid snowy canyons in a place far from home. Villages appear, then whip past so that I cannot enter them. These vistas could be a movie or an illustration from a children’s book. But they are the shroud upon another whiteness that seethes and snaps in unlocalized time and space. It forms the icicle of panic, the world blanching in a pang.