“And please don’t tell me I can’t afford it,” Jake says, “because I know better.”
He grins at us. I’m caught by conflicting feelings. I don’t know whether to shake his hand and congratulate him, or belt him in the mouth for outsmarting his parents.
“Jake,” I say, “I have to hand it to you. You are one crafty bastard.”
“Thanks, Pop.”
Doris is silent. Her mouth is shut, and her lips have disappeared. They may never reappear again.
What was I saying before, about money being an abstract thing to Jacob Perez-Sullivan? I guess I was wrong. He understands it, all right, and now he’s eager to get what he believes is rightfully his.
He’s smarter than his two parents put together. Kinder, too, but that really doesn’t take much. And now he’s ready to take off with the fortune he earned before he ever even knew what money was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was a regular morning at the playground, a morning like all others. Jake was barely four years old, an adorable kid in blue-and-white-striped OshKosh overalls and red sneakers, racing around from the sandbox to the swings to the monkey bars. Winter was just losing its grip, and the warmth of the sun had him prancing around like a pony in a field of clover.
The world was all his, and rightfully so. If you can’t be king when you’re four years old, when can you be king?
I was having a hell of a time keeping an eye on him, but it was a delightful task. My boy just couldn’t stop laughing. If there was any such thing as pure happiness, I was looking at it.
The place was crowded, as it always was on sunny days. Suddenly a well-dressed thirty-something man clutching a clipboard rushed into the playground, a man who was clearly on a mission.
Any adult who enters a New York City playground without a child immediately sets off a pervert alert, and there was nothing subtle about this guy. He was actually inspecting the male children, one by one. He’d crouch down in front of each boy, study his face, and quickly move on to the next.
Suddenly he was looking right into the face of my son, who was busy filling a pail with sand. The potential pervert lingered there, instead of moving away. I got to my feet and hurried over, ready to kill the man if necessary, but before I could say a word he turned to me and said, “Is this your son?”
Sweat was dripping from the guy’s sideburns. He did nothing to hide his desperation.
“Yes, he’s my son. What’s it to you?”
“We’d like to hire him.”
“Hire him?”
The guy pointed to a grassy field beyond the playground, where a cluster of people stood amid reflectors and light stands.
“We’re shooting a print ad for Wilson’s Grape Juice. I’m the art director, and our model just called in sick, so if I seem desperate, please forgive me.”
“You want my son to be in the ad?”
“Yeah. He’s got the look.”
“What’s the look?”
“It’s in his eyes. Bright and cheerful, plus he’s handsome. It’ll take about an hour and it pays five hundred bucks.” He glanced at his watch. “Say yes or no, please, because the clock is running and I’m trying not to go into overtime.”
My instinct was to turn him down. I didn’t want to turn Jake into a trick pony. I wanted him to be a kid for as long as possible.
“I’ll pass,” I said.
“A thousand,” the art director said.
I was still reading the contract while the makeup lady was touching up Jake’s cheeks. He was delighted to be in the midst of whatever this adventure was, charming and cheerful to the staff. His partner in the ad was an adorable red-haired girl with pigtails. They each had to hold up boxes of fruit juice while posing cheek to cheek and smiling from ear to ear. Jake took it upon himself to put his arm across the little girl’s shoulders, delighting the art director, who was good to his word. The shoot took less than an hour, and right there on the spot he wrote out a check for a thousand dollars to Jacob Perez-Sullivan.
“Your kid saved my ass today,” he said, handing over the check. “Ever think of making the rounds with him?”
“Never.”
“Think about it,” he said, shaking my hand. “I wasn’t bullshitting you before. He’d get work. He’s got the look. Not many kids have it.”
When we got home Jake excitedly told his mother all about the man who’d taken his picture in the park. Puzzled, Doris turned to me for an explanation. I knew from her face that there could be trouble, and when I told her Jake was going to be in a grape juice ad, Doris flew into a tirade. How dare I do this without discussing it with her? I told her there hadn’t been any time to discuss it, that the whole thing had happened abruptly and was all over before I’d even had a chance to phone her.
I pointed at the notebooks on her desk. “Besides, you were translating poetry. Even if I’d called, you never answer the phone when you’re translating poetry.” She knew I was right. When Doris was in her Ivory Tower, the world outside did not exist. Still, she remained righteous.
“There is no excuse for what happened.”
“Oh, Doris, just this once, please, give me a break.”
“We both know you’ve done the wrong thing.”
“Here,” I said, slapping the check down on her desk. “Is this so wrong? Want me to tear it up?”
Her eyes widened at the sight of the sum. Doris was paid something like twenty-five dollars a month by a Spanish-language magazine for her poetry translations, which never took less than three days to complete. She inspected her four-year-old son’s check and was unusually quiet for a few minutes. “What is this product our son is selling?”
“Grape juice. Not liquor, not booze, not drugs, just grape juice. Unless you’ve got a problem with Cesar Chavez and the migrant farm workers, I really don’t see what’s so sinful about this money.”
“Well. We could start a college fund.”
“Exactly. My God, Doris, don’t tell me that you and I are about to agree on something!”
She called for Jake to come to her, and enfolded him in an embrace. “I’m sure the juice is full of sugar,” she said. “But I think I can live with that.”
“Hallelujah.”
“But don’t ever do anything like this again without consulting with me.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “We’re arguing about nothing. This was probably a one-shot deal.”
I was a little bit wrong about that.
The print ad came out and was a huge success. Jake literally looked like the happiest kid in the world, and the grape juice company got in touch with us about having Jake audition for a TV commercial.
Doris green-lighted the project, and Jake blew them away at the audition. He starred in grape juice commercials with talking parts that made him a mini-celebrity. People magazine included him on their Kids To Watch list, speculating that one day Jacob Perez-Sullivan might branch over to acting in TV sitcoms, and maybe even feature films.
Success has its price. I had to burn a lot of my vacation days to take Jake to work. Doris rarely had the time or the inclination to take part in this side of Jake’s career, the hauling and fetching, though she did write elaborate excuse notes for the days he had to miss school (“Please excuse Jacob Perez-Sullivan from school today. He has a rare opportunity to take part in an advertising campaign for a fruit beverage that has been getting glowing evaluations from the Department of Consumer Affairs…”).
Kids can get cranky with all those hours under the hot lights, waiting for art directors to make up their minds about lighting and camera angles, but Jake was usually pretty good about it. I actually loved being there with him because I wasn’t at work and I wasn’t at home. Work had always been stressful, and now home was just as bad. The clock was ticking for Doris and me. We were trying to keep up appearances for Jake’s sake, but it was only a matter of time before we split.
I was sleeping on the couch and getting up before Jake did each morning so he wouldn�
��t know about it. I was an early riser, but still I lived in fear that one morning Jake would wake up before me, find me sprawled on the couch, and demand to know what was going on.
I was ready with a string of lies: I was coughing all night, and didn’t want to wake your mother…I wanted to read for a while last night, and I didn’t want the light to keep your mother awake…. Your mother and I have absolutely nothing in common and nothing to share, so we don’t wish to participate in the most intimate and trusting thing two people can do, which is to fall asleep side by side….
Oh, buddy boy, what can I tell you? The sperm cell swims eagerly toward the egg, totally oblivious of the way the shooter and the catcher truly feel about each other, or don’t feel about each other. You got your start in a climate rich in health and vigor and everything else you need but not love, buddy boy, not love, and I’d apologize for that if I thought it’d do any good, but it wouldn’t….
An argument on the shooting set snapped me out of my daydream. We were in a studio on West Forty-eighth Street, the set for a print ad. Jake was seated at a kitchen counter, between a bottle of Wilson’s Grape Juice and a big bowl of grapes that the art director was not happy about. It seems that these grapes had a grayish pall to them, and were not nearly “robust” enough to suit his artistic eye.
The photographer wanted to get on with the shoot, saying what do you expect, it’s the middle of February, this is out-of-season fruit so it’s going to have an out-of-season dullness to it. The art director said it’s not an out-of-season ad, it’s got to look right, goddamnit, and in the midst of what was about to turn into a shouting match the makeup man—a maniacally energetic gay guy who’d dusted a springtime rosiness onto Jake’s cheeks—came up with a solution.
He mixed some sort of purple makeup powder with vegetable oil, poured the resulting fluid into an empty spray bottle, put the grapes on a sheet of newspaper and spritzed them. The result was startling. The grapes were not only purple, they shone with the kind of sunny goodness the fruit juice label promised to anybody smart enough to drink the stuff.
Using a pair of tongs, the makeup man put the grapes back into the bowl. The photographer applauded, and the art director called the makeup man a genius.
“Hey, it’s just a paint job,” the makeup man said, and then he turned to Jake. “Do not touch these grapes, young man, and for heaven’s sake don’t even dream of eating them, or you’ll wind up in the emergency room.”
Jake grinned. “How’m I supposed to eat them if I can’t even touch them?”
“Wise guy.” He winked at Jake, turned to the crew, strutted off like the hero he was. “All right, people! Problem solved!”
The shoot went well, and when it was over the grapes—still wet and reeking of whatever that purple stuff was—were thrown straight into the trash barrel. Jake and I headed for the subway, trudging through the winter slush.
“Dad.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s wrong to waste, isn’t it?”
“It sure is.”
“They wasted those grapes, didn’t they?”
“Well, yeah, in a way they did, because nobody ate them. But on the other hand, the painted grapes made the picture look better than it would have if they hadn’t painted the grapes. See what I mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t feel bad about those grapes. They served a purpose, even though they went in the garbage.”
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“How come Mom never comes with us to the studio?”
The hairs at the back of my neck prickled. I took a deep breath, the giveaway that I was about to tell a lie. “Your mother’s got a busy schedule these days.”
“She doesn’t have any classes today. It’s Friday.”
“Well, she’s grading papers.”
“She never grades papers until Sunday.”
“Jake. She has things to do. She just couldn’t come with us today.”
“She never comes with us anywhere anymore.”
“That’s not true! And remember, she takes you to your cello lessons.”
“You never come to my cello lessons.”
“Buddy boy, I do have a job. If I don’t show up once in a while, my boss tends to get upset.”
Jake ignored what I’d just said. “Doesn’t Mom like us?”
I stumbled on the slippery subway steps, grabbed the handrail to keep from falling. “Jake. What a question!”
“Doesn’t she?”
“Your mother loves you, Jake. You know that.”
“Does she love you?”
We’d reached the subway platform. The uptown Number 1 train roared into the station just then, giving me time to compose myself in the wake of this dreadful question. We got on the train and settled into our seats. Jake was all earnest-looking in his thick winter coat and hat, staring at me as he waited for his answer.
“Of course your mother loves me, Jake. And I love her.”
There was no strength in my words, absolutely none. My heart was colder than my slush-numb feet.
“You never kiss her,” Jake said.
I forced a chuckle. It had a horrible sound, like laughter in a funeral parlor. “Sure I do!”
“I’ve never seen you kiss her.”
“We kiss in private, in our bedroom.”
“You don’t sleep in the bedroom.”
How long had he been holding this in? How the hell did he know? I didn’t have to ask.
“I was thirsty one night and I got up to get a drink and I saw you on the couch.”
He’d gotten himself a drink of Wilson’s Grape Juice, packed with Vitamin C and fortified with essential nutrients. We always had plenty of that stuff around, free of charge.
I swallowed, long and hard. Jake’s gaze was steady, relentless. Did he want the truth, or did he want comfort? I opted for comfort. It would be easier on both of us. “Sometimes I can’t sleep, so I get up to read, but I don’t want to wake your mother. So I go to the couch with my book, and sometimes I fall asleep reading.”
“The light wasn’t on, Dad.”
“What light?”
“The reading light by the couch. You were just asleep there, in the dark.”
Jesus Christ. “I didn’t want to wake up your mother by going back to bed in the middle of the night, so I just stayed on the couch. It’s no big deal, Jake.”
He stared at me like a trial lawyer who knows the witness is lying, and can do nothing about it. I had to say something to break that terrible stare. “We usually eat dinner together, don’t we?”
This gave him something to think about. “Yeah….”
“When you’re in a play, we always go together, and what about when we take weekend trips upstate? Aren’t we all together then?”
It had been a long time since we’d taken a weekend trip, but he seemed to be buying it.
“Yeah.” A tickle of a smile appeared on his face. “I guess we are.”
“Sure we are!” I was encouraged by my own false enthusiasm. “Listen, when we get home, we’ll all have dinner together, and maybe there’ll be a good movie on TV that we can watch.”
“Mom doesn’t like the movies we like.”
“Well, that’s all right. The main thing is we’ll eat together, and we can tell her all about the painted grapes.”
His face lit up. “Can I tell her?”
“Sure. It’s all yours, champ. You tell her.”
We came home to an empty house. It was nearly eight o’clock when Doris trudged in with a shoulder bag full of books. The sight of this was supposed to tell us she’d spent the day at the library. Maybe she had, or maybe she’d spent the afternoon humping one of her colleagues. I didn’t really care, either way.
By this time I’d begun a stupid fling with a copygirl from Hoboken that took place one night a week, during Jake’s cello lesson. Her youthful enthusiasm soon gave way to whiny complaints about the limits of our relationship, to which I cou
ld only reply: “What relationship?” She knew my situation, knew I wasn’t about to make any kind of move that would jolt my son. She “wanted to write” and heard I was a good person to learn from, and that’s how it started—the crusty old rewrite man with the heart of gold, showing the budding journalist the way.
But my heart wasn’t gold, and her dreams of a journalism career were tarnished by a nightmarish lack of talent. She could not put a sentence together. If the English language could speak for itself, she’d have found herself facing assault charges.
I was always eager to catch that train out of Hoboken, to get home in time to tuck my son into bed. The fling only lasted a few weeks, and when I broke it off in a coffee shop near the Star she was as relieved as I was. She stared at me long and hard before saying, “You think you’re doing your son a favor, but the price he’ll pay goes up every day.”
I was stunned by her words. For one thing, it was a startling perception. For another, it was the most coherent sentence she’d ever come up with. Maybe I was a better mentor than I’d thought….
Anyway, Doris entered the house after a day of reading and/ or fucking, and luckily Jake was taking his bath, so I had a chance to fill her in as she poured herself a glass of white wine.
“Doris. He’s asking all kinds of questions.”
“He has an inquisitive mind.”
“He was asking why we never kiss, and why I was sleeping on the couch.”
Now I had her attention. “What did you say?”
“I told him we kiss in private, and I like to get up and read at night so I won’t disturb you.”
Doris nodded approvingly, one conniver to another. “Not bad.”
“I also reminded him that we eat dinner together.”
“Except on the night he has his cello lesson.” She had a catlike grin she saved for times like this. “Where is it you go on cello nights, Samuel?”
“The library, just like you. Now listen. We’ve got to jolly it up a little bit tonight, you hear me? I’ll order in Chinese. That always puts him in a good mood.”
Raising Jake Page 29