New Moon (30 page)

His lack of curiosity about his own nature consigned him to blind misery.

Eventually we agreed to have Bridey judge our respective positions: whether the meaning of life was having fun or solving its mystery. After we presented our briefs to her (like the golden apple at the Judgment of Paris), for a moment she stared at us in stunned disbelief. Then she snapped: “Get out of here with your tomfoolery, the
both of you!”

Debby and our nurse shared a room at the rear corner of our apartment. On Bridey’s nights off, she went home to the Bronx where she kept a small flat. Our sister would rap softly on the wall, which was Jon’s and my room, and whimper softly, “Rich or Jonny, come.” She didn’t like being alone, but we were forbidden to visit her. She was ostensibly being trained to lose her fears so she wouldn’t end up like me.

I would tiptoe down the hall, slowly turn the handle and open the door. I’d kneel by her bed, make jokes, cuddle her, hold her sweaty hand, and tell her stories. These were what she and I called “rescue missions.” Often I’d enact shadow cartoons on the ceiling, making animal shapes with my fist and fingers—rabbits and foxes in the dim light of the courtyard. This was Squizzle Drip, the baby I once tumbled with in the park and pulled on a sled, the lone innocent in our cabal.

In the midst of my puppet show one night—my whispering having inadvertently gotten too loud—my mother was on me like a rabid dog, mauling my back through my PJ top. With hysterical shrieks, she chased me back to my room.

Her appearance was supernatural and hideous, blows on my shoulders while I imagined her still asleep. By then Daddy was awake and chose to bombard me with epithets until the walls shook. This was overkill even by Towers family standards, but they actually believed I was making her
more
susceptible to fear by comforting her.

In my attempts to win over my siblings, I was undiscourageable. Inexplicable surges of good will put magic in the air, as something leprechaun-like flowed into 8C’s leaden chamber, an autonomous power and glee penetrating even its bastille. I imagined I could set everything right, reverse our troubles in one fell swoop. I knew, of course, that that was impossible; everyday I experienced the actual depth and entanglement of our situation. Yet I found myself bubbling with empathy and gratitude, and I wanted to turn the mood into something lasting.

When both our parents were off the premises and neither Jonny
nor Debby was watching, I laid out treasure hunts: successive clues scribbled on pieces of paper and stuffed into hiding places (the metal rim of a lamp shade, a keyhole, the top of a table leg, the crook of a statue), each providing a hint to the next, and so on, until the grand prize, a present I bought for the winner.

My most beneficent lark was a surprise party. At Cushman’s Bakery I’d buy serrated cupcakes with lemon or chocolate frosting plus a container of ice cream and smuggle these into the house. Then I arranged them on the table with simulated elegance, a paraody of a party converging with the party itself.

“Happy no one’s birthday!” I shouted euphorically.

They dropped whatever they were doing. Debby would prance in delight and, as we gobbled our treats, Jon and I would tell her outré stories of the past, like the time we followed the wrong woman home from the fish market. Our sister was astonished: “God, Mom was even worse. You guys got to see all the good stuff!”

We were recklessly blasphemous, calling her the “Wicked Witch of Central Park West” and the “Ice Queen,” Debby’s precociously brilliant sobriquet. Afterwards, we did the dishes together, tossing plastic plates and cups acrobatically from sink to wiper to putter-away.

We were such great friends then, and there was such promise in our togetherness that a shred of it might have stuck, but our roles were as subterfuge and interchangeable as Colonel Mustard and Mrs. Peacock in the game of Clue, our true alliances undisclosed even to ourselves. Under pressure they would tell on me, every last thing I said during our powwows. They never intended to; they always swore loyalty to our trio, but Mom was an enchantress and she could wring or entice a confession as she wanted. It was decades before I learned the full extent of their betrayal.

From our new location on the West Side Dr. Friend was only four blocks away, so I began seeing him at odd hours, usually seven at night. Taking a break from homework, I grabbed a jacket and slid away, making as soft an exit as possible.

In a cross-breeze of cherry-blossom petals, I traipsed along Central Park West. The moon was above the City and I was on Fabian’s
incomparable quest. Even if Dr. Friend was a mercenary, I was a worthy cipher and we were engaged in a mission that transcended his fee. In a few moments life would loosen its grip and became its own daffy topic. I would throw off strangleholds, break out of ruts, roam unencumbered among the week’s events, witnessing them as something else—actions of my hapless self.

Dr. Fabian had originally characterized psychoanalysis as “a method of learning why one had certain feelings and behaved in particular ways.” We were, he said, bound in habits by forgotten events.

I pictured Sigmund Freud then as an immense arcane system, towering above me like the Parthenon in which I pictured Horace Mann before I went. The founder embodied the infinity and wonder I felt emanating from my own existence. (“You had such an advantage,” a Horace Mann teacher told me. “You got to see the psychiatrist as magician at the only time such a thing could happen—the beginning of your life.”)

The demons I had brought to the office in the West Village overwhelmed me with their omnipotence and fathomlessness. Then through Fabian’s intercession, they had taken on denomination. They were still shadow figures in an abyss—just as grim and treacherous—but I had confidence he knew (or at least suspected) the manner of thing they were. Ultimately, if I reached a crossroads of desperation and implored him, he would break his pact with the oracle and spill the beans.

Dr. Friend made it clear he didn’t know and never would. There was no pot of gold; there was in fact no rainbow. The spooks and phobias were my own, as stubborn and insoluble as I was, as life itself. “You expect to leave here someday with the solution,” he said one day, “but, in this business, cure is called termination. When you feel able to end this relationship, that’s when you’re well.”

On my way home from baseball practice one afternoon, I told a teammate, who also had trouble hitting, that my problem was psychological. “I’m afraid of what the ball represents.”

“What do you think it is with me?” he retorted. “Just because you go to a psychiatrist doesn’t make you any more psychological than anyone else.” My peers had finally caught up to me.

I realized something else too: it was time to take leave of the
baseball jinni. At this level, my calling was the
mythology
of line drives, not their athletic accomplishment.

Rodney had entered Horace Mann the previous year, and I got to know him in the camera club. He was its most elite and vocal member. He subscribed to the two major photography magazines and brought current issues to meetings where he analyzed elements of prize-winning photos, turning the rest of us into pretenders and novices. He wanted to strike gold with his Rolliflex, so he stayed abreast of contests and deadlines and regularly proved the mettle of his Franke & Heidecke lens by resolving random stone walls on fine-grained Pan X film. Then he printed them for every morsel of contrast and grain. Neither a member of the intelligensia nor a major jock (though he did run track), Rodney held his status by oratorical authority and a James Dean look, a persona he played to the hilt by cultivating a sneer and slouch and greasing his hair straight back from a broad forehead. He had a dense solid body with penetrating, occasionally wild eyes. At Horace Mann he was an anomaly: the embodiment of nasty charm.

I don’t remember when I become infatuated with Rodney, for I knew he was special the moment I saw him. Thereafter I insinuated myself into his company at every opportunity. I used our shared history seminar with Mr. Clinton as an excuse for discussing assignments. We gradually became good enough friends for him to risk candor. My dressing, he confided, was abominable. “It’s because your mother buys your clothes. You look like someone dressed by a mother.” He was right. I had long suspected that she went out of her way to make me look dippy.

Thereafter Rodney tried to upgrade my fashion as well as educate me in the ways of the world. He was doing me a favor, he said, teaching me to act cool, not be a twerp.

Inspired by his wardrobe critique, I visited Saks on my own and came home with black-and-white checked jackets and powder-blue shirts of soft cotton like his. I imitated his dabs of Brylcreem and slicked down my hair. My mother was as amused as she was aghast. I had touched her 1940s funny bone—sarcasm was her main mode
of humor. “You think that’s handsome? You’re making a spectacle of yourself, drowning in lard. What are you, some kind of greaseball now? Gonna rob a bank? And look at how you’re dressed! Checkered tie and striped jacket! Gray slacks and brown socks! No one in the world wears gray and brown together.”

I was on my way out the door to catch the subway to school as Bob came to observe the latest dust-up. He commented dryly, “Some of the best dressed men in the world wear gray with brown, Martha.”

“He’s not one of the best dressed men in the world!”

One Friday afternoon Rodney invited me home, straight on the bus from Riverdale to Yonkers—no parental prearrangements, no PJs or change of clothes. I was old enough for that kind of prerogative: fifteen. I immediately called Dr. Friend to cancel my appointment. I expected that he would share my delight, but he only reminded me that my father would still be billed. “I’m at Rodney’s!” I enthused.

“I’ll see you on Tuesday,” he said drily—no acknowledgment of my pluck.

As Rodney and I studied together in his room that afternoon, I felt like a character in my own fantasy. We ate dinner with his parents, then walked to a movie like real teenagers. This was an intimacy I had dreamed of with Jeffrey, dabbled in with Steve for a day. We lay in beds on opposite sides of his room and talked past midnight—teachers, girls, summer camps, pranks. Just as I thought we were about to doze off, he lowered his voice for a segue of intimacy and confessed his string of sexual successes with an older woman who found him attractive. This was a caliber of derring-do no one in my circle had claimed; it was also unprecedented candor from another guy. I felt a tumult of conflicting emotions: awe, envy, gratitude, pride at our friendship, shame at my deficiencies. I was like an eighteen-year-old’s little brother, not daring to identify with him because his station was so elevated.

Rodney’s matter-of-fact tone implied that he wasn’t bragging, just being straight because I had earned his trust. When he finally yawned, “Hey wow, goodnight,” I sank into sleep and awoke to country morning: the smell of bacon and birds chirping in the trees.

As we were getting dressed, me in the slacks and shirt I had worn the day before, Rod made an out-of-the-blue promise that if I came to camp with him next summer, I would meet a lot of girls and have a good time. The implication was obvious, but he voiced it anyway: “We don’t just steal panties there. We have
real
raids.”

Camp Wakonda in the outer reaches of the Adirondacks was owned by the parents with whom I had just supped. The rest of the year his father was a high-school principal in Brooklyn and his mother taught grade school in Rye.

A month later, I came back home with Rodney, this time having packed a toothbrush and change of clothes. His parents were ready with a slide show. It took only a few shots to see that Wakonda was Chipinaw’s antipode. It had minimal athletic facilities; instead, a bistro-like hall featured a variety of social events, each of them enticingly depicted. It wasn’t an arts camp like Buck’s Rock either; it was a teen country club. By the end of their pitch I couldn’t imagine going back to my follies with Jay and Barry. Rod’s parents might have produced a dog-and-pony show, but I would have followed their son to the North Pole.

My mother preferred to keep her flock together, and she pointed out that my father wouldn’t allow such a switch anyway—the camp wasn’t kosher and also he didn’t know the owners. When I raised the matter with him she turned out to be correct.

“But
you’re
not kosher,” I protested. “We eat bacon and shrimp.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s in our private home. The appearance is what counts.”

However, Aunt Bunny thought it was a wonderful idea for me to strike out on my own. Since she was sending Michael and James to a non-Jewish camp in Maine, she didn’t see why I had to be held to a higher standard.

“What is it, Paul? Is he the only Grossinger in this family, so he alone gets to suffer?”

Not only did he give in but, when the time came, he drove me to the Adirondacks himself, stopping at a couple of resorts along the way to schmooze and talk shop. It was our first father-son junket, and I loved arriving with Paul Grossinger, owner of the Big
G., president of the New York State Hotel Association. We were greeted by proprietors of lesser establishments and given tours of their grounds. I got to listen in on regional trade plans, how to stop unions, and other gossip. Then, back in the car, PG encouraged questions (and compliments) and responded with lengthy discourses on the future of the Catskills.

One look at Wakonda made me wonder if I had seen pictures of a different camp. The bunks were bare-bones shacks, playing fields nonexistent or in disrepair. Weeds grew up through the tennis court’s clay, and part of its net was torn, the hem hanging loose. On the ballfield, second and third base were missing—pentagonal patches where they had once been—and the backstop had basketball-size gaps in its wire. Color War would have been ludicrous here.

On a hill near the dining room sat the fancy nightclub with its Coke machine and jukebox. Full of anticipatory razzing, our bunk made the trek the very first night. Girls clustered along the far wall, as the juke box blared away. I stayed by the side, telling myself that I was getting my bearings. Four or five songs played while I stood mesmerized.