Streets of Gold (55 page)

I did not know what I wanted.

I wandered through Pigalle again. A breathless voice implored me from a doorway, and I hesitated and then approached. There was the aroma of perfume, the rustle of silk, the click of high heels as the girl shifted her weight. We bargained for several moments until I realized with a shock that I was talking to a man in drag. I backed away in horror.
“Mais il y a des filles aussi,”
he explained, but I hurried to the curb, and held my cane aloft, and hoped a taxi would stop for me.

We arrived home during the second week in June. The children scrambled out of the house and rushed into our open arms. I held little David close, I stroked his hair.

“Did you have a good time, Daddy?” he asked.

“Yes, we had a marvelous time,” I told him.

My grandfather called that night. He welcomed me home and then told me he had finally heard some word about Luke. According to the detectives, Luke was living in a hotel on the Bowery. I asked my grandfather if he wanted me to go down there, but he assured me this wasn’t necessary.

The next day, he went down alone to talk to Luke, and tried to persude him to come home again.

Luke told him to go to hell.

Rebecca is shrieking, shrieking. I rush out of the studio, I trip on the rough stone steps leading up past the pool to the house, cross the patio, find her screaming still. “What is it?” I ask. “For God’s sake, what is it?”

“Andrew,” she says.

He is moaning near the pile of logs stacked alongside the storage shed. I search his face with my hands. There is an open wound over his left eye. I feel his blood hot and sticky on my fingers. Hysterically, Rebecca tells me he’d been trying to split the logs with an ax when a huge splinter hit him in the face. She goes suddenly limp in my arms and though I try to support her, her dead weight collapses her to the ground. My son is crying in pain now. I rush into the kitchen. Harriet dials the hospital for me, and it is she who drives Andrew and me to Stamford. He is bleeding profusely as she leads us into the emergency room. The doctor takes five stitches over Andrew’s left eye, and bandages it, and asks me if I carry Blue Cross. I can only think what might have happened if this had been Harriet’s day off.

My thirty-seventh birthday fell on a Tuesday. Honest Abe personally went to Harlem to pick up my grandparents, shrugging aside the very idea that I should send a Carey limousine for them. “What’s the matter with an Oldsmobile? An Oldsmobile is no good? An Oldsmobile, if you want to know, is a
better
car than a Cadillac.”

Abe was performing a familial duty. In October of 1963, we were one big happy family, you see. On Passover that year, my grandfather had read the four questions in the Seder ceremony to my youngest son, David, and if that had not been a fine demonstration of the melting-pot theory, then I have never understood the theory at all. (I sometimes think I never have.) From the page printed in English, my grandfather had read (quite dramatically, in fact), “Why issa
this
night of a Passove differ from all the
odder
nights of a year?”

And David, reading from the Hebrew side of the page, had answered,
“She-b’chol ha-lay-los o-noo och-leen cho-maytz u ma-tzoh, ha-lai-loh ha-zeh ku-lo ma-tzoh,”
and so on.

Even Honest Abe laughed.

The quintet was between engagements on my birthday. That is not a euphemism. My career did not take its nose dive till 1965, and I owe its longevity to the boys in Detroit. News of my “accident” had made modest headlines in most of the country’s newspapers, and I’m sure the public’s curiosity (“Is his hand all gnarled, or
what
?”) accounted for the increased attendance wherever we played, and extended a career that should have ended in 1962, just as Biff had prophesied. Five, six years, he had said. Seven the most. By 1962, the rock shlocks were already making inroads. By 1964, when the Beatles made it all respectable with their film
A Hard Day’s Night,
jazz musicians, with a few rare exceptions, had all but had it. Listen, who can kick? I got ten years out of it. Remind me to send the boys in Detroit a bunch of roses. Or a case of crabs.

We sat around the rosewood dining room table in the house on top of the hill. My grandfather, as befitted a patriarch, sat at the head of the table, though he knew, as I knew, that he was no longer the patriarch; his own family was scattered to the four winds, Dominick in Brooklyn, Cristie in Massapequa, my mother on the Grand Concourse, and Luke only Christ knew where. With neither pomp nor ceremony, my grandfather had passed the scepter on to me, ignoring those next in the line of succession. His son-in-law, Jimmy, was affable but ineffectual. His eldest daughter Stella, was formidable (especially during inquisitions) but nonetheless a woman; he
was
Italian, you know, though by 1963 he had been a citizen of these United States for eighteen years. I was now the actual if not the titular head of the family, and though my grandfather occupied that chair at the head of the table, not a soul sitting around it doubted that we were here to honor the reigning potentate. Rotating clockwise from where my grandfather sat with his back to the draped sliding Thermopane doors, my kinsmen, my
compaesani
, my
landsleite
, and my devoted followers were:

1. Davina Baumgarten Lewis, blond and beautiful, thirty-one years old, who was wearing (according to the testimony of Reliable Rebecca, her doting sister) “a green jersey dress slit to her navel.”

2. My mother, the indomitable Stella.

3. My oldest son, Andrew, who at the age of fourteen had taken to announcing each of his intentions to fart or belch. “I have to fart,” he would say, and invariably would do so.

4. My mother-in-law, Sophie, who while babysitting with the children during the long trip Rebecca and I took to Europe in the spring of 1962 caught Michael innocently examining his penis and told him about a woman named Sheine, who used to live on the lower East Side, and whom everyone called the Crooked Lady. “Sheine used to abuse her genitals,” Sophie told him. When we got back in June, Michael asked me what his “generous” was.

5. The aforementioned Michael, who, at the age of twelve, was seeing a psychoanalyst in nearby Greenwich three times a week. Rebecca refused to believe that her mother’s story about Sheine the Crooked, Lady had only aggravated Michael’s problem. “Your mother is a cunt,” I told Rebecca.

6. Me, the thirty-seven-year-old birthday boy, my staunchest admirer, sitting in sartorial splendor (Rebecca supervised the tailoring of all my clothes) at the end of the table opposite my grandfather, shades covering my dead baby blues.

7. My grandmother, Tess, on my left. She was eighty years old, and complained constantly of arthritic pains. She also complained about there being thirteen people at the table; thirteen, she said, was a hoodoo jinx of a number. She walked with a cane these days. Welcome to the club, Grandma.

8. My youngest son, David, ten years old. David was the star pitcher of the town’s Little League baseball team. When I told him my brother Tony had been a very good ballplayer, he said, “Is he the one got killed in Korea, Daddy?” Wrong war, son. Close, but no cigar.

9. Seth Lewis, Davina’s husband, the noted certified public accountant, the least loyal of all my subjects, though certainly the most vociferous. He had predictably complained about the long drive up from Central Park West, where he and the fair Davina now lived, still childless. “That Merritt Parkway is a bitch,” he said, the moment he stepped into the house. And belatedly, “Happy birthday, Isadore.” He called me Isadore as a joke.

10. My father-in-law, Honest Abe, who, though never devoutly Orthodox or Reform, had come a long way toward becoming reformed — in his fashion.

11. Rebecca Baumgarten Di Palermo Jamison, my bride of fifteen summers. Our anniversary would fall on a Tuesday this year, and we had already decided to take a long weekend away together, perhaps go back to Mount Pocono, where we’d spent our honeymoon — provided I was not playing in Nome, Alaska, or Kalamazoo, Michigan. She was wearing a green dress, too. I knew because when she took it from the closet she asked if she should wear the green. “The wearin’ of the green will be fine, m’dear,” I’d said in what I thought was a perfect Irish brogue. Rebecca had not laughed. She had not laughed when Davina came through the door wearing green, either. Rebecca did not laugh much lately. Had she seen the pictures, after all? Or were they only in her head — as they were in mine?

12. My father, Jimmy Di Palermo, who now stood up and banged on his glass. I knew it was my father, and I knew what was coming.

13. Francesco Luigi Di Lorenzo, my grandfather.

Three more than a
minyan
.

An all-American
minyan
, at that.

My father cleared his throat. “I have a little poem,” he said.

“He
always
has a little poem,” my mother said, and sighed.

“In honor of Ike’s birthday,” he said, unfazed.

“Read it fast, Pop,” Rebecca said. “The roast is almost done.”

“I like Jimmy’s poems,” Sophie said. “You write good poems, Jimmy.”

“You do, Jimmy,” Abe said. “Your poems are very interesting.”

“
What
has he got?” my grandmother asked. In addition to the arthritis, she was going deaf in one ear. I put my hand gently on her arm and said into her good ear, “A
poem
, Grandma. He’s going to read us a poem.”

“Oh, good,” she said, almost childishly.

My father’s poems were always acrostics, the first letter of each word on every line combining vertically to spell out a message or a name. He tapped his glass for silence again, and then began reading:

“Happy birthday, son,” he said, and handed me the shirt cardboard upon which he had hand-lettered the poem. I could not see the ornate lettering, but I knew he had probably worked on it for weeks.

“Thank you, Pop,” I said.

“That was a good one, Jimmy,” Abe said. “I think it was one of your best.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘relatives alike,’ ” my mother said. “What’s a family, if not relatives?”

“I had to make it rhyme, Stella,” my father said.

“Yeah, but that’s stupid,” my mother said. “Relatives
are
the family. Isn’t that right, Seth?”

“Well, he had to make it rhyme,” Seth said.

“Pop, do you want to help me carve the roast?” Rebecca asked, rescuing my father.

“He tries to make it rhyme sometimes,” my mother said, “and he don’t make any sense.”

“The artwork is so beautiful, though,” Sophie said.

“Well, he used to design crochet beading, don’t forget,” my mother said.

“Do you need any help in the kitchen?” Davina asked.

“Wouldn’t you know the
shvartzeh
would get sick on Ike’s birthday?” Abe said.

“No, we’re fine here,” Rebecca called.

“Grandpa, would you open the wine?” I said.

“What?” my grandfather said, and I suddenly realized he had been silent for quite a long time.

“Open the wine, Papa,” my mother said.

After dinner, they brought in the cake, turning out the lights first, even though the effect was lost on me. I beamed embarrassed approval while they sang to me, and then Rebecca put the cake on the table, and moved my hand toward the rim of the plate, helping me to locate it. I had already felt the warmth of the burning candles, and knew exactly where it was.

“Make a wish,” Davina said.

“I already have.”

My fingertips touching the edge of the plate, I positioned myself over the cake and let out my breath.

“A little to the right,” Rebecca prompted, and they all burst into applause when I blew out the candles.

“What did you wish, Daddy?” Michael asked.

“That’s a secret,” I said.

“Tell us,” Davina said.

“He’s not allowed to,” little David said. “Otherwise it won’t come true. Isn’t that right, Daddy?”

“That’s right, son.”

“I have to fart,” Andrew said.

“Andrew!” my mother said sharply, and burst into laughter.

I felt arms encircling me from behind. A kiss touched my cheek. I thought at first it was Rebecca. “Happy birthday, Ike,” Davina whispered. “What did you wish?”

“Can’t tell,” I said.

I had wished we could go again to Pass-A-Grille, and walk again in Rebecca’s magic garden, and sit again in sunshine on a white sand beach while she read
Peter Pan
aloud to the children.

David is throwing a rubber ball against the wall of the garage. I sit in sunshine on the patio, and listen to the steady rhythm of the ball thumping against the wooden doors. His brothers are away, there is no one to play with him. So I listen to the solitary game, and I sit in sunshine, and wish for all the world that I could walk out there to him, walk unerringly to where he is monotonously throwing the ball and catching it, throwing it and catching it, and say to him, “Hi, son, want to catch with me?”

I listen to the ball.

The record sales began plummeting sometime in 1965. The drop was sudden and swift, no gradual tapering, no slide from popularity to relative obscurity in a slow descending curve. I was at the time demanding (and getting) $7,500 a week for myself and the quintet, and taking home, from personal appearances alone, somewhere between $3,500 and $4,000 a week for myself, fifty-two weeks a year (if I felt like playing that often). In addition, there were television appearances, and royalties from records and my
How to Play Jamison Jazz
books (Volumes I through IV) and from sheet music annotating my unique improvisations, and there were European tours, and a guest shot in at least one motion picture — there was, in short, the whole
shmeer
. I had hit the American jackpot, than which there is none greater. Even after paying four sidemen, and a driver for the band bus, and a band boy to help us load and unload the instruments, and a personal valet, and my manager, Mark Aronowitz, and a publicity agent, and an advance man, there was more than enough loot left to keep Rebecca and me living in the style to which we had become accustomed. (I was to dread the sound of those words every time they came up during the divorce negotiations.) We had the big house in Talmadge, with a housekeeper, a gardener, and a chauffeur, a swimming pool and tennis courts (Rebecca played, and loved the game), and we also had a house in the Virgin Islands, which we visited on those rare winter weekends when I was not out there earning the big buck, and an eight-room
pied-à-terre
in the city — we had it made, friends. I was earning money by the fistful, and I was investing it wisely, and my investments made more money, and it seemed to Rebecca and to me (and probably to my grandfather, too) that I was indeed digging out gold from the streets, and the vein of ore would never be depleted, I would keep on working with my pick and shovel forever, the supply was inexhaustible.