by Herbert Gold
Amanda was squinting and squirming. She was either concerned about her child or seeming to be or bored with her afternoon visitors. In his line of court translation, Kasdan had learned to interpret for himself the squirms and squints of the accused, not always correctly. But now his daughter was telling him aloud, “You know, Dad, before I met you, I learned from, oh, you don’t know them, my friends…” What kind of friends? “… since I didn’t have a father role model, you know how it is, I had to study other older guys…” She waved toward him and some kind of acrid perfume blew his way. Probably she was sweating into it. “… and Ferd’s nice to me.”
“What about your husband?”
She smiled, blinked rapidly through the smile. One of those friends must have told her it was a cute gesture. “What does that…?”
“What does that,” Ferd said for her, “have to do with the price of guacamole, quote-unquote? Hey, listen, you don’t think sometimes in the dark of the night maybe she’s throwing herself away on this dude – no offense meant? I mean, no offence, but now there’s the little birth disability, chromosomes maybe, uh, a development problem or two or three…”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“Not behind your back would I say such a thing. Cause love plus doin’ the dirty knows no color line, I understand that, and all credit to her and you – whoops, I keep forgetting, you didn’t actually raise her, but in your heart of hearts, you care, always did, am I right?”
Silence from Kasdan. Silence from Amanda. Sergei breathing noisily in his sleep.
Ferd objected to leaving everything up to him in the way of decision-making and frank social procedures. He waited for Kasdan to speak. Kasdan did not speak despite the opportunity. Ferd turned to Amanda; Amanda did not speak. Two older men were concentrating their attention on her. For a moment this was very interesting.
After giving them all the chance in the world to contribute, Ferd took a couple of quick hiccupping breaths, priming the carburetor, getting the motor fed. Now was the time to try being extra nice. “Hey, not that you don’t have a whole lot of exciting lifestyle going on,” observed helpful Ferd.
“Thanks.” This time Kasdan ignored the two glossy brown dates shining on the floor. If there’s one cucaracha, there are always more. Next time he might bring boric acid and ask Amanda if he could put it into the cracks under the sink in the kitchen, using a spoon, which he would then wash carefully. He assumed Sergei would not be crawling under the sink, but he might lick the spoon.
Ferd absorbed the gratuitous insincere thanks which had recently been sent his way. “So, Cowboy” – unwilling to give people more time for thinking than they deserved – “since I really like the girl, okay, now she’s a woman in her own mind, but she’s still your daughter to me, very lovely, but I wonder if she’s sort of, you know, because she didn’t grow up with an actual father in her life... okay, Wayno’s probably a good stud the way they are, right, right, a hunk. I’ll grant that, smooth moves, that liquid action, ethnic – but when he gets a little older? What then? You and me, Cowboy, we got our maturity, but Dee Wayne? Think he’ll have that?”
Amanda overcame her trance, two men discussing her. “That’s out of line. You’re out of line.”
“Sorry, dear.” He gave her a comforting smile. “Right, the father of your babe and all. Just like Chevy Chase – you don’t remember, he used to be well-known – just like the Lord Almighty, he used to be well-known, too – a husband gets to say, I’m God and you’re not.”
“He’s my husband. Doesn’t have to be God.”
“I’m not speaking ill.”
“Really bullshit, Ferd.” She looked alert more than angry. No need to be angry – it was all about her.
Kasdan asked, “You don’t speak ill of anyone, do you?”
“Not in front of them, anyways. Not the Muni Court judge nor God Almighty. Cept you, Cowboy, but that’s because we both got the same sens-a-yumor. Who knows, we could even be brothers.” He considered the chances. “Well, cousins at least. You look more like Semitic. I don’t think I have any Mosaic persuasion in my blood.”
He believed his pulled-down forelock, the daredevil stretch of transplanted sandy hair, gave the impression that he had just flown down Pine Street in an open-cockpit World War I Spad, Captain Ferd Conway of the U.S. Air Corps. Rakishness required care, also faith that his forelock would fall right when the follicles taken from the back of his neck adapted to their new home. He kept a brush in his glove compartment and a comb tucked into his jacket pocket. Ferd had nothing but contempt for those long-handled combs that stick out of back pockets; those were for twerps and perps and D’Wayne, the hip-hop hubby with no finesse. Ferd personally, himself, would never wear aviator sunglasses at night, no matter how bright the neon and fluorescence; pimps did that, thinking they were cool; D’Wayne did that, too. Personally, himself, Ferd needed no cool other than his own internally generated supply.
Amanda’s nose was again twitching in a way that a lover might find cute except that it meant to say, without actually saying it, I’ve had enough of this. But she spoke it aloud anyway, with a small addition. “I’ve had enough of this shit.” At last. Kasdan was happy that she was about to dismiss Ferd. Which wasn’t what she did. “Ferd and me got some business together, Dad, and since you managed to keep your mouth shut for eighteen-nineteen years till I dug you up…”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Whatever.” Nose twitching. “I was out there and it took your kid to find you. Maybe you weren’t looking. Whatever, now just lose me again for today so Ferd and me…”
“Amanda,” he said.
She peered at him. “That kind of hurt daddy face is so over, Dad.”
“Over is over. You’re a grownup…”
“So now we’re starting to act like regular family? Fighting?” In her forced grin he recognized his own face when, just for practice, he tried out a smile in the mirror. Photo-face image registered, she sighed and delivered the universal daughter to father signal of bored impatience. She glanced at Ferd, just a glance, no wink; just a little twitch of the eyelid in just one eye – no wink. Okay, she winked, but only once. “Day growing late, Dad. Sergei gonna wake up, need more gruel, Dad. Whyncha come by for, I don’t know, let’s be polite, I’ll make you a sandwich tomorrow, say?”
She opened the door and stood there. In the turmoil of what he saw, smelled, and heard here, Kasdan’s chest hurt. Ferd was murmuring, “Hey, Mandy, your nose is real cute when it switches around like that, like a rabbit. You need a carrot?”
Kasdan heard heavy footsteps on the stairs in the hall. Sergei stirred and coughed, waking. Then, seeming to respond to the footsteps, Sergei began to kick. He recognized the sound. He was welcoming his father home. He knew in his damaged infant self that this was his father.
D’Wayne stepped through the open door. “Yo, whoa, we got a party here?” He was carrying a KFC bag with a drawing of the defunct founder beaming like Santa Claus.
“How you doing? I was just leaving,” Ferd said.
“Folks not treatin’ you right?” D’Wayne hugged Amanda, then breaking to his son, bending, crooning softly, “Baby, baby, baby.”
Sergei was drooling. Even normal infants do that until they grow a little older and then the lips are just wet, just glisten.
Amanda opened the KFC bag and said, “That’s gross. I told you to go to Safeway.”
D’Wayne looked up from his son. “I didn’t forget, Mandy. We’re a little short this month.”
“Get tall. This is America.”
Kasdan heard someone else speaking in his daughter.
“But I bought a ticket from the lucky Arab all-night store. Got a good feeling about this one, Mandy.”
Kasdan believed the California lottery was not the solution to this family’s financial problems, despite the television coverage of gleeful security guards and welfare mothers. Fair to say: it was too chancy.
Ferd grinned at
Kasdan. “Three’s a crowd, goodbye.”
Four in this case, Kasdan thought, doing the arithmetic.
Without looking at them, touching Sergei’s cheek with his thumb, caressing the silky skin, ready to help Sergei back down into sleep or up into wakefulness, D’Wayne said: “Five of us here, man, if we countin’.”
“Hey! Next time!” Ferd called, waving, in a hurry. “Catch you later, okay?”
He was out the door. D’Wayne picked up Sergei and was crooning softly to his son, his arms full of warm child in its halfway bliss between sleeping and waking. Amanda pulled the window curtain aside and was staring at something heading down the street. Kasdan waited a moment before saying goodbye.
– 10 –
Ellis, where Amanda, D’Wayne and Sergei had moved, was a Kaposi’s sarcoma street, scarred, feverish, day and night. Kasdan lived only a few blocks away. “So now you can babysit on a moment’s notice,’’ Amanda explained. “Isn’t that thoughtful of me, Dad?’’
In this center of the city, which had been convulsing almost since Gold Rush times, the homeless wandered or crouched with their Styrofoam begging cups and slept on geological insulations of stacked litter. They dreamed of a better yesterday, a worse tomorrow. Ambulating no place, muttering vows of revenge, angry or tweaking, the agitated ones scuffed against last night’s abandoned cardboard beds, sometimes kicked, clubbed, stabbed, or stole the shoes of those enjoying siestas in doorways. A band of Indians who used to reclaim their ancient lands on the steps of the old Main Library, now the Asian Museum, had recreated a Native American ancestral territory up Larkin at Turk, but retained their traditional name as the Library Tribe. Kasdan was accustomed to the hazy mumble, “Fucking Book Depot was our grazing land, White Eyes, so build me a casino or give me a dollar.’’ Kasdan preferred the second option; he was a bringer of temporary peace, especially since they might recognize his Civic parked nearby.
A landlord named Patel, like many landlords in the Tenderloin, refused to recognize them as Indians – he was a true Indian, he claimed, almost a Brahmin – and set fire to the boarded-up Good Karma Hotel when they took it over as the Great Spirit Squat. Mr. Patel’s heroic auto da fé was disputed by his insurance carrier, claiming he had committed what bureaucrats call “arson.’’ His lawyer argued that there was no proof of crime by Mr. Patel since the leaky gasoline can found in his client’s modest Ford Falcon was needed to prime his carburetor in cold weather. The matter was settled out of court. All-Star Insurance paid.
The faceless, heartless, friendly folks at All-Star considered it best not to litigate this case against a striving ethnic businessman with eleven children. Suttee was still a recognized Hindu tradition and All-Star treasured its clients nation-wide as part of the All-Star family. Since Ferd Conway had accepted the Patel matter on a small retainer, large contingency basis, there was a nice payday for both the Patels and the Conway.
Kasdan admired Ferd’s skill at hunting and gathering in the Tenderloin – tweakers at the thieves’ market near City Center Plaza, selling shoplifted surplus from Kaplan’s Surplus & Sporting Goods; crack and pill merchants; bargain-priced watches from mainland China, inscribed with names from Vanity Fair advertisements; and of course, the dealers in manual, oral and anal massage. Overhead, as Kasdan walked to his daughter’s apartment, red-tailed hawks circled in the sky, mirroring the human hawks observing their girls at work from all-day, all-nite convenience store doorways.
Kasdan admired the tail finery of both the human and the hawk hawks. He admired the morning shift Asian massage employees teetering on their heels into “Beyond the Green Door’’ and “Deep Stroke.’’ He kept his own apartment in the Tenderloin because he liked company and he liked familiarity, sometimes explaining to his fellow court translators that he was a creature of tradition, which sounded more upscale than being a creature of depressed habit. (His friend Harvey Johnson said, “What you like, man, is rent control.’’) Approaching Amanda’s building (landlord: another Mr. Patel), he felt a delicate whisper of pigeon feathers slip down his shoulder. The hawk was sailing off with its takeout dinner. Kasdan brushed at the feathers unnecessarily; their quills and gravity steered them to the pavement.
“Amanda, I’m here.’’
“You’re late, Dad.’’
D’Wayne defended his father-in-law. “Mandy, twenty minutes late ain’t late. Hey man, we appreciate.’’
“We’ll miss the show.’’
Kasdan told them to get on their way, but Amanda lingered, fretting over Sergei. Sergei had learned some life lessons. The maneuver of smashing his head against the bars of his crib if no one came to him when he wanted something right now, no delay, such as milk or a spoonful of honey or simply to share the pain of life, usually brought adult action and fingers tenderly stroking the welts on his forehead. Working in his favor, there was equipment everywhere, walls, floor, the noisy vibrating of his crib bars, all useful for summoning caregivers when screaming failed to bring immediate action.
D’Wayne winced at the sound. He tried to be philosophical. “They’ll do that, my momma said I did that.’’ It gave him grief. “But I don’t anymore, do I, babe, so maybe he’ll stop.’’
Amanda shook her head. “Like he’ll hurt his brain? You have those headaches, you think that’s kind of why?’’
“Only my me-grain when you tell me things like it’s my fault.’’
“Nothing’s your fault,’’ Amanda said. “Let’s go, we’re missing the Coming Attractions.’’
This may have been just another normal young parent conversation, something Kasdan had missed because he had missed marriage. D’Wayne was trying his best to be a right-on husband, rarely replying, “Don’t need this shit from you, babe.’’
There was silence all around as they contemplated their shared fact, Sergei Mose. The grandfather had arrived to give the young parents a time out for themselves. It was unnecessary to name what all three were thinking: Sergei is bruised, born bruised. Someone had to break the silence. Amanda pulled D’Wayne’s arm. ‘’Come on, we’ll miss the feature.’’
Sergei seemed to understand the limits to his power over others when negotiations by means of head-banging failed to produce the desired result, often because neither he nor the others understood his wishes. He stopped thumping his forehead against the crib bars. The welts on his face may have distracted him; perhaps the terrified bustling of parents stirred reptile beginnings of pity in his soul. His grandfather hoped so. Everyone, judges, jailers, executioners, and infants should develop that instinct. This included Sergei Mose.
Or in the middle of the banging he just forgot to continue. He flooded out like an overpumped engine; there were little sobbing explosions, hints of future or past spasms. The convulsions just stopped.
Smart, smart, smart. A lizard with a lizard mind catches a moment of rest before leaping at a gnat. At times, Sergei seemed almost to care for himself. The life force pushed through his brain stem; health might be glimpsed as an option, if there were an attentive God. Kasdan wished it were so. Learning to care for himself (good Sergei!) could be an advance toward caring for his mother, his dad, his grandfather. Way to go, Sergei Mose! It was the evolution toward moving in the world as a human being. Since Sergei was already loved by three persons, it was called upon him to join them and love himself. Oh stop that head-banging, dear child, it’s a torment.
A plastic paper-napkin clip slid off a table and fell to the floor with a soft papery and plastic plop. What marvelous vibrations you produce, grandson, which ricochet across a room, accumulating force, knocking over napkin holders when you stop your flailing and sobs. Sergei’s shadowy baby eyebrows arched. He must have heard the sound or been listening for the next sound, which was the voice of his grandfather murmuring, rumbling in his chest, humming a deep note, the song of wordless soothing as he rocked his daughter’s son.
Kasdan’s eyes hurt when he gazed upon the child. He squinted against the invisible glare beamed from the
child’s skin, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. He disapproved of this blinding, these tears; it damaged his easeful passage; he said aloud, “Allergies.’’ He would have needed to offer his daughter, who had escaped to the movies, thanks to the babysitter, the variety-pak of explanation: “Sinus... an eyelash... got a Kleenex?’’
“Here’s a paper napkin, fresh off the floor.’’ That would be his daughter.
“I think I might be coming down with something.’’
“Dad, if he catches it, I swear I’ll kill you.’’
Homicide might run in the family but unlike Kasdan she wouldn’t mean it. In the grandfather’s case, as a cautious person, he awaited the proper time, in due course, no hurry, and with appropriate rewards. I’ll kill you from Amanda meant she was teasing, something a daughter might say if she were kidding on the square. He blotted his eyes with the napkin which had only briefly rested on the floor, surely not long enough to pick up microbes or cockroach droppings.
Kill was a thing a daughter might say to a longtime absent, nonexistent father whose existence she was getting used to, too late in her life to ever name him Daddy.
From outside the building, an advancing boombox, best buddy of a street-dwelling Vietnam veteran, bass turned up, roared a rap recitation which Sergei was too young and Kasdan too old to appreciate. He would have preferred the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’’ which dated from the time when he was sure he could get what he wanted.
After Sergei Mose was born, the attending pediatrician at San Francisco General, with a watchful young medical resident in psychiatry trailing behind him, came to visit Amanda, groggy after a difficult birth, the episiotomy accomplished, D’Wayne holding her hand at bedside in a room with a curtain separating them from other new parents. Stately and solemn, a true professional, Dr. Farley leaned over Amanda, making eye contact no matter how fatiguing it was for him to do so. He wanted to make sure she understood him. The resident, his hand across his chest, touching his stethoscope – a gesture of sincerity – was fully invested in this learning experience. It was an opportunity to broaden his perspective on the issues of unusual parturitions and births.