Before My Life Began

by Jay Neugeboren

  Julie made the first shot. I recalled pictures I’d drawn of the Knick players: Harry Gallatin, Vince Boryla, Max Zaslofsky, Ernie Vandeweghe. My father showed them to everyone on this route. The Jefferson fans were booing and hissing, stamping their feet. I looked at the banners that hung down above us, for college and pro teams that had won championships. Julie’s second shot bounced off the rim and Jefferson was moving downcourt. I ran back, my feet throbbing, my heart pounding inside my ears as if there were kettle drums there. Tin blades with ragged edges turned around inside my chest, faster and faster. I waited under the basket, glanced up at the clock, moved out and waved my hands when the ball came into my zone. Then it was in the far corner, away from me, and Willie Benz, Jefferson’s redheaded sharpshooter—All-City two years in a row and headed for North Carolina, even though he was only five-ten—let go with a jump shot. I screamed cross-court, but too late. Benz shot his jumpers like line drives, without arc, and the instant the ball left his hand I knew it was in. I started back up court.

  The score was tied. There was a little over a minute left. Would I ever play so well again? I imagined the still, flat surface of a lake. I saw enormous white water lilies. I saw a stone fall, disappear soundlessly through the black water. I was sitting on the grass beside the lake, knees up, arms locked around them. The girl sat next to me, her head against my shoulder, her hair dusting my arm. When she touched my cheek with her fingertips, I shivered. Why did she love me so much? Why did she stay with me when she knew I would only bring trouble into her life?

  Tony moved by. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You look dead.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You want a time-out? We got one left—”

  “I said I’m okay.”

  I moved from left to right, under the backboard. Goldstein was shouting at us to work for the last shot, to take the tie if we had to, not to give the ball away. I drifted from one side to the other, shoving past defenders, following the ball. My head was thick, as if clogged with damp towels. I looked up, saw the roof of the Garden. What went on way up high, in the darkness above the canvas cloths and tarps? Before the war, Abe took me to the circus each November, got me everything I wanted—programs, peanuts, cotton candy, hot dogs, soda, souvenirs. The roof had seemed higher then and I’d wondered how they rigged up so many ropes and wires and platforms, how the workers got up there to connect everything. Whenever the high-wire performers worked without nets, I was terrified. I wanted to talk with them in the dressing rooms afterwards, to ask if they were scared too, if they imagined what it would feel like to miss, to plunge, to know in those few seconds that there was nothing in the world that could keep them from breaking, from shattering against the ground.

  I felt someone pressing on me from behind. I pushed back, saw the referee’s eyes, shot my hands out and felt the ball come to me. Two other players collapsed on me at once and instead of going up for the shot—if they fouled me and I missed one, they would have the ball with a chance to score two and go ahead—I looped the ball right back outside, to Tony. The whistle blew. I turned to the referee. He pointed to the man who was leaning on me. I had one shot at the foul line. Damn!

  “Why didn’t you shoot?” Tony asked. “Jesus Christ, Davey, they’re knocking shit out of you and the refs don’t call nothing. Why the hell didn’t you shoot?”

  The crowd was applauding. The man who fouled me had five personals and was leaving the game. He shook my hand, told me how great I was. I breathed in, bounced the ball twice, looked at the basket, let the ball slip off my fingertips. Swish! We were one point ahead, but they had the ball.

  “Tighten up! Tighten up!” Goldstein yelled. “No fouls!”

  Louie Newman was screaming like a maniac, cursing the referee and yelling at us to foul, to get the ball back, to call a time-out. Had he bet on me? I felt as if I were deep underwater, near the bottom of a lake where all things were cold and dark. I wanted to sleep. The ball went left to Benz, streaking across the key and, in mid-flight, with the slightest movement of his head and shoulders, he sent Tony high into the air, Tony’s hand outstretched to slap down the jumper, then slipped under him, off-balance, and drilled the ball through the basket. The Jefferson fans went crazy, shaking their fists in the air, yelling at us to eat it. They were ahead for the first time since the second quarter, and there was nothing in the world I could do about it.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Tony muttered as we hustled back the other way. “Oh Jesus fucking Christ. What am I gonna do now?” He braked to a stop, turned, took the ball past half-court. “C’mon, c’mon,” he called to us. “Number eight. Number eight.”

  Nobody called a time-out. Goldstein didn’t like us to call time-outs when there was less than half a minute left and we had the ball because he believed that gave the other team time to set up their defense. He preferred to let us use the momentum, to take our chances.

  “Get it to Davey!” he yelled. “Get it to Davey—!”

  I made my moves, waited for Morty Zisk to pick for me so I could take the ball at a low post and go up for a bank shot, left side off the boards. The cheerleaders waved megaphones in the air, led our fans in a chant, a deafening crescendo, the way they’d done all season when I was hot. “Vo-lo-shiiiin…Vo-lo-shiiiin…Vo-lo-shiiiin…” There were nine seconds left. If I got the ball and made the shot, the crescendo would become a whistle and the whistle would end in a loud “Boom!”

  “Hey fixer,” Jackson whispered. “How much your uncle gonna give you for letting us beat your ass?” I didn’t react. “We all know you ain’t gonna make no last shot.” I moved out to the foul line, slid backwards, kept my distance so as not to get fouled. One foul shot wouldn’t help. They didn’t collapse on me now because they needed to defend against the short pop-shot from outside, where Tony was deadly. Seven seconds. I saw Al Roth’s face, smiling at me, telling me that someday I would be better than he was. I had the size and the moves. I blinked, tried to turn his face around. Was he somewhere in the Garden, watching me?

  Six seconds. “Come on, fixer,” Jackson said. “Do your uncle’s work now, baby.” Roth had been All-City at Erasmus four years before. He’d been the playmaker on C.C.N.Y.’s Cinderella team. I could see his photo, signed, on the wall of Goldstein’s office. I blinked again, but all I could see when I got rid of Roth’s face were other photos of old Erasmus stars: Waite Hoyt, Sid Luckman, Jerry Fleishmann, Lou Kusserow, Johnny Rucker.

  Three seconds. I shoved off, almost tripped where the floor was slick from sweat, and I prayed that the ball would come to me. If I scored, we won. If I missed, we lost. And it seemed unfair, suddenly, that I was only one person, that I had only one body, one mind, one life. I wanted to be everywhere, to be doing everything! I wanted to be passing the ball and stealing the ball and shooting the ball and taking the ball off the boards. I wanted to be inside the bodies of the other guys on our team, making every play for them so that there would never be any mistakes, so that we would never lose.

  Two seconds. Tony was driving the baseline. I tried to stop seeing faces, to concentrate on the game. Roth was leaning forward, biting his nails, rooting for me. Tony moved out past the foul line, dribbling right. I was being clobbered, held, but there was no whistle. The floor vibrated from the stamping. I heard girls’ voices, wild and shrill. I saw my mother, on her knees, hammering away at the metal box. Tony started to go up with the ball to shoot, and the instant he did my man moved out, tried to get to him to stab at the ball, and Tony slipped the ball past him to me, perfectly. Tony crashed toward the basket, through a wall of Jefferson players, a broad grin on his face. I was exactly where I was supposed to be, about eight feet away, on the left side. I turned right, went up, my feet light as feathers, and my man was too late getting back. I was high in the air for the easy shot off the boards and there was nobody up there with me. There seemed to be no sound, no voices. The ball slid from my fingers. I heard the other players gasp, stop b
reathing, their backs to me, their arms high. I floated down, watched the ball hit the backboard and angle down for the basket. The buzzer sounded. My feet touched the ground. The ball hit the front rim, hung there, fell off.

  I was hardly surprised. The guys on the Jefferson team were running around the court, leaping up and down and shouting like crazy men, their friends pounding them and hugging them, their girlfriends shrieking and jumping, kissing them. I didn’t wait for anyone to say anything. Goldstein looked right at me and I stared back. He could think what he wanted. They all could. I picked up my jacket and warm-up pants. Three of the guys sat on the bench, their heads in their hands.

  Benz was next to me, grabbing my hand, pumping it up and down, telling me how great I was. “Tough luck,” he said.

  Jackson shook my hand. “Hey—you’re okay, Voloshin. No hard feelings, huh?”

  Then they were gone. One of the Jefferson cheerleaders, a tall girl with a blond ponytail who’d been eyeing me all game, grabbed my arm and leaned up toward me. “I think you’re real cute,” she said, her lips brushing my ear. “Wanna come to a party later—?”

  “Suck off,” I said, and pulled away from her.

  “Oooh—and you’re mean too,” she said, prancing off, laughing at me.

  I walked down the ramp toward the locker rooms, and it was only after I’d stooped down and made my way along the arcade, shoving through the crowd, that I realized Gornik and Newman and Willer were not there waiting for me. Nobody would be waiting for me. I’d go home by myself on the subway, my mother would ask me about the game, and I’d lose either way, wouldn’t I? If I showed that I was sad because we lost she’d laugh at me for taking the game so seriously, and if I said nothing or showed I didn’t care she’d try to make a big deal of it, asking me why I kept things from her.

  My father would not be there. I made a fist, lifted it, wanted to drive it through the brick wall. But there were too many people around. I didn’t want them gawking at me afterwards—calling for a doctor, trying to help, whispering to each other about what I’d done and why.

  Where was my father? The question did not seem strange. And what, of my father, would live on? Who, after a few weeks, would remember that he’d ever lived? Even before we’d gone to the cemetery, my mother had emptied out the closets and dressers, putting his clothes in boxes, telling me to take them downstairs to Beau Jack. Beau Jack was much taller than my father, but maybe he could get the clothes altered, maybe he could trade them in somewhere, at a tailor’s or a rummage shop. While she went through my father’s clothes, she talked to him, chided him for not treating himself well. If he’d liked himself a little more and her a little less, she said, things might have been better. Didn’t she know it was no good the way he worshipped her? But what could she do? Abe said to marry him, so she married him. Abe said he wouldn’t be like the others, that he’d treat her right, that he’d be good to her.

  I imagined my father sitting in the stands after everyone was gone. Beau Jack was next to him, wearing one of my father’s old ties. Dull orange, with brown stripes. Beau Jack told my father not to worry, that everyone had bad luck sometimes, that I was young, that I was a winner.

  High school kids shoved by, telling me what a great game I’d played, telling me we’d do better next year. Sure. Someone asked me what college I was going to play for. I pushed him aside and entered the locker room. I was the first one there. There had been lots of scouts and coaches at the game, I knew, but none of them introduced themselves to me and none would be talking to me now. That was for sure. They were all scared because of the scandals. The hope that I’d nurtured for a few years, the one dream I shared with my father, of being able to get out of Brooklyn, to a good out-of-town college—that dream was now dead.

  What college would give Abe Litvinov’s nephew a scholarship? Even if Abe was never convicted or named by the D.A., I knew I didn’t have a chance. Sure. They were all cowards and liars. Abe was right about that too. The only difference between men in his business and men in so-called legitimate businesses, he said, was that the men in his business were honest with themselves. They were free of illusion, of self-deception, of hypocrisy.

  The 50th Street platform was jammed, the Jefferson students celebrating as if it were New Year’s Eve. Some of them were necking in the middle of the crowd to show how free and happy they were. I wedged my gym bag tighter between my feet, closed my eyes, let my head rest against a steel girder.

  “You won’t hurt yourself, will you?”

  I opened my eyes.

  “What?”

  She smiled up at me. She had large hazel eyes and soft, wavy brown hair that spilled out along one side of her forehead from under a black beret.

  “Hi,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been watching you ever since the game ended—I’ve been watching your eyes—and I have the distinct impression that if somebody says the wrong thing to you, you might do something you’d be sorry for later.” She seemed to speak without taking breaths. “Not to them, but to yourself.”

  She stared at me intently, her lips pressed tight, her eyebrows furrowed, as if, I realized, she were imitating the way I glared at the world when I was angry. I recognized her. Her name was Gail Kogan and she was a senior at Erasmus—a girl with a reputation for being brilliant and Bohemian, for hanging around with the brainy kids and going out with guys from Ivy League colleges. There had been an article about her the year before in The Dutchman, the school newspaper, about how she was trying to organize a repertory company modeled after the All-City Chorus—a group of high school students from the five boroughs who would put on a series of plays that they did everything for: sets, lighting, directing, music, acting.

  “Look. If you don’t mind, could you just leave me alone?”

  “No,” she said. “Of course not. I’m too worried about you. We have to go home most of the way on the same train anyway, so I’ll just keep you company. That won’t be so terrible, will it?”

  She had a large, full mouth—no makeup—and when she smiled the right half of her mouth seemed to smile by itself, with the left side following, as if it wasn’t sure of itself. She sighed. “I’m not usually like this,” she said softly. “But I figured that at a time like this…” She stopped. “What did I figure? Can you tell me?”

  A downtown local came into the station—I’d already let two go by—and I picked up my gym bag. Maybe if I got on the train quickly, if I shoved myself in there would be no room for her. But as the train slowed down I saw that it was as packed as the others. I set my bag down again and looked at her. She cocked her head slightly to the side and to my surprise I found that when she smiled at me, warmly, I almost smiled back. For a brief instant I imagined that she was somebody I knew well—a sister or a cousin—and I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do more: to let all the anger and frustration I was feeling out on somebody like her, somebody who cared about me enough to take it—or simply to let her comfort me and tease me for a while, so I could get my mind off the game.

  “Look,” she said. “I have an idea. How would it be if you took me out for an ice cream soda? Would you like to do that?”

  I felt warm, slightly dizzy. I unzipped my team jacket. She was looking at me with such eagerness that I had the strange sensation, for a moment, that were I to say no to her she might do what she’d said I would do, something to hurt herself.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but all I really want is to be alone, okay?”

  “He vants to be alone,” she intoned, mock-dramatically. I moved away, but she touched my hand and spoke again, quickly. “Only you really shouldn’t be alone at a time like this. Listen—if you took me out for an ice cream soda, by the time we finished and came back the rush hour would be over and the trains would be empty. Then I’d leave you alone, all right? You must be hungry. You played so hard. I never… Just come with me, please? You won’t be sorry if you do.”

  “Some other time.”

  “What oth
er time?” I tried to look away, toward the tracks, but she moved into my line of vision and stood on tiptoes. “I warn you. I’m very persistent. I thought you should know that.”

  “You have a sister who’s blind, don’t you?”

  “I have a sister who’s blind.” She looked bewildered, as if I’d wounded her somehow. “That’s what I’m most famous for. You’re famous for your basketball skills and your uncle’s profession and I’m famous for my beautiful blind sister. We have a lot in common, then, don’t you see?”

  “No.”

  “Listen. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Me too. When’s your birthday?”

  “September twenty-second.”

  “Mine is September nineteenth. Which means I’m older. How do you feel about that?”

  “About what?”

  “About being seen with an older woman? I skipped grades when I was young, that’s why I’m a year ahead of you. My parents pushed me. My mother is two-and-a-half years older than my father. She helped put him through medical school by working as a teacher. My parents want me to be a doctor, like my older brother Peter. I like you.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I like you.” She smiled broadly, so that her gums showed. “Oh I knew I’d get a rise out of you if I kept at it. Persistence is my most salient quality. What I said was ‘I like you.’ Do you mind?”

  I don’t know.” I started to smile, and when I did it was as if tiny flashlight bulbs went on behind her eyes. “Do I mind that you like me, or that you said you did?”