“Looka him! Looka the poor boy!” she roared. “My Baby Jesus, he don’t sleep all night! How he gonna remember, hah?” One of the judges, a Jesuit who clearly had his own notions concerning the proper application of the term “Baby Jesus,” advanced on my mother, and I daresay he will never come closer to martyrdom in his lifetime. Mama gripped his cassock up near the collar and lifted him a few inches off the ground while she delivered a perplexing lecture on the problems of oratory, and then released him only because she wanted both arms free for gestures while she launched into a massive delivery of her famed “greetings to the bishop” speech: she was using it to illustrate the foibles of memory.
A mild pandemonium rippled aimlessly through the auditorium: my mother’s dynamic French thundered and reverberated, metal chairs scraped against concrete as students stood up and pushed against one another, straining for a better look at the disturbance, and in one corner of the hall, several of the younger and more progressive Jesuits, awake at last to the awesome powers of my mother, were forming a flying wedge. On stage, a Jesuit who was fluent in French cast anxious, worried looks around the auditorium, apparently wondering whether a bishop was in fact present. “Nobody ever talls me anything!” he bawled, and what he have said after that I don’t know, because that’s when I oozed off-stage and out the side door. It was what you might call a day to remember.
Following my famed oratorical contest at Brooklyn Prep, my mother and I stayed at the Pierrepont Hotel for quite some time, and each night after struggling with Latin or geometry in our fourth floor cubicle, I would take the elevator up to the roof, which was another world that I lived in. There was a solarium, and that was very dull, but outside, on the terrace, you could feel the breeze and look out across the East River to the Manhattan skyline, stacked in neat columns of windowed lights. To the right, the Brooklyn Bridge arched across the still waters like a double string of luminescent pearls suspended above black velvet, and now and then, lonely in the darkness, a tugboat would hoot sadly along: it was like the sound of asking, and the river would sit quietly, listening.
I was listening, too, mainly for the sound of footsteps, for my ventures to the roof were motivated by a wistful, persistent hope that some night a teen-aged Irish bobby-soxer would step out on the terrace beside me and say something like, “Isn’t the city beautiful at night?” or “You remind me of Cary Grant.” And then I would introduce myself and recite a poem that I had written about the city and how it looked from up there on the roof. It was rather an elaborate daydream, for I had even written the poem and had it ready. It began:
My city shines beneath me
Winking right back at the stars …
And like that. But as long as we lived there, and as often as I went up on the roof, there was never any girl—only the old folks inside the solarium, the eldless shuffling of cards, and the thin strains of “Beautiful Ohio” crackling through the Muzak.
ii
Summer vacations were a poignantly frustrating experience in those days. Ideally, they should have been periods when I could escape from it all by taking a job at one of the hotel resorts in the Catskill Mountains, but each June when I broached the idea to my mother, she would massively retaliate by roaring, “Work? Work? Where? In those crummy Catskills? Hah?”
“But Mama,” I would reason gently, “Mama, they’re not crummy, they’ve got real nice summer resorts.”
“Summer resorts! SUMMER resorts! My God, you never seen summer resorts like the summer resorts in Lebanon. You know Zahle? Your father was born in Zahle. It’s in the mountains, they got a whole street there, it’s all water. My God, it’s a regular Venice!”
There was no arguing with her. She weighed 170 pounds and, after all, she was my mother.
One summer, Mama tossed me a scrap of consolation. She suggested that I join the local Boy Scout troop and go away with them to summer camp. I mumbled something about not being a “joiner,” but it got lost in translation, and anyway, it wasn’t altogether true, for I had long been considering joining a boy gang, a neighborhood group calling themselves “The Essenes.” As fate and Mama would have it, though, I wound up in what proved to be the most remarkable Boy Scout troop in the country. The scoutmaster was a khaki-clad Fagin who taught us how to steal neckerchiefs from sleeping campers of other Scout troops during overnight hikes in the woods. At times, in fact, when there seemed to be a possibility of picking up an ax or two among the loot, the scoutmaster himself would lead us on these raids, slithering across inert sleeping bags, Indian style, on moonless nights. He called it “path-finding” and promised us merit badges. It was a period of muddy thinking and murmured questionings at the camp that summer, and more than once, the camp director, his veined hand spasmodically clutching his neckerchief, would look skyward, vaguely expecting apparitions or perhaps a sudden and unpredicted eclipse of the sun. After an apprehensive two weeks, I was glad to scamper out of there, back to Mama and her booming monologue on Lebanon which was to stalk through my teens like a Red Death of the eardrum.
iii
Midway through my high school career, my brothers escaped from Mama’s bellowing via the simple and direct expedient of running away from home. Eddie, who had lately been tormented by a psychotic fear of being devoured in his sleep by bedbugs (once he stayed awake for seventy hours), slipped quietly into the depths of the Navy Submarine Service without even a ripple. Maurice, whose only disquieting trait had involved persistent efforts to reverse the charges on local phone calls, enlisted in the Army Air Corps. And big brother Mike joined a group of itinerant actors. Mike, in fact, eventually turned pro and became a brilliant Shakespearean. Once, when he was apearing on Broadway in Catherine Was Great, he made the singular mistake of coming back home. After six months, Mama’s blasts about the “old country” began to get to him, but rather than run off again, he lapsed into a Shakespearean escape ploy that he had copied from Hamlet—he feigned insanity.
Mike would rattle around the apartment declaiming sonorously from Coriolanus or Othello, and then, at odd and unexpected times, such as when I was at toilet, would ask if I were interested in “investing in a new and fabulous venture—Shakespeare for dogs.”
The first time he approached me in this manner, I merely walked away from him, but later he piqued my curiosity by showing me an excerpt from his adaptation of Julius Caesar. It was a scene in which the stage direction called for a “huge Dalmatian” to “whip his toga round him” and snarl: “Et tu, White Fang?” I was hooked and my brother knew it.
He had me so convinced, in fact, that one night I ventured to criticize his scheme as impractical since it probably wouldn’t coin much profit at the box office.
“You gotta remember,” I told him, “with Shakespeare you’ve always got a limited audience.” He turned and fixed me with a watery eye: “Arf gratia arf!” he rorfled, and silenced me for the day.
Occasionally Mike would devil Mama with his wild soliloquies, but after listening with tight eyelids for a while, my mother would end it all by roaring: “YOU SHURRUP YOU CRAZY TALK!”
Then one night Mike escaped again, not to return for many years. Months after he left, Mama lifted an eyebrow at me in the kitchen one afternoon and demanded in a low voice: “Who Shakespeare? Is he Lebanese?” I didn’t dare so no.
My own escape from a padded mosque remained several light-years beyond the straining reach of my halvah-stained fingers. Meanwhile, my sister had married and hied her to exotic Detroit, Michigan, so that the defection of my brothers from behind the Quince Curtain left me somewhat alone with the Mother of the Blatti. And right away, now, the “shrinkers” are going to wag their bearded domes and mumble, “Tush,” “Pity,” “psychologically fatal to be raised by a single parent, especially the mother,” and spidery things like that, but what do they know, the smart-nosed kooks? My mother imbued me with a greater sense of security than ten parents, and it hasn’t affected my psychological development in the slightest, even though sometimes I talk a lit
tle funny, a little funny, a little—there, now …
iv
With my brethren gone, my nose still unfreckled and my mother’s quince jelly act getting rave notices in Variety, I sought escape into inner space by plunging myself into extracurricular activities at Brooklyn Prep: writing, acting, debating—all the usual retreat activities for kids with lousy grades, no reflexes and non-Irish parents. In the middle of my sophomore year, largely due to my years of study at Mama’s own Actor’s Studio on Park Avenue, I was cast in the title role of the Prep’s annual dramatic presentation, Cyrano de Bergerac. When I made my entrance on opening night, my mother, who was sitting in the first row of spectators, rumbled, “That’s him—that’s my Will-yam,” in a voice that carried out onto Eastern parkway. But unlike the Thomas Jefferson affair, this time I didn’t go to black. I mean, the part was made for me. There was Cyrano with his monstrous nose, and there was I with my crushing sense of being an “Arab alone.” I merely equated the two, and delivered a performance that gave even the groundlings pause. The play ran five nights, and I would always look forward with excitement to the first act dueling scene in which I plunged my long sword into Valvert, who in our production was played by a snub-nosed, freckle-faced Irishman named Shaughnessy. Each time, after the “kill,” I would smile down upon his inert form, and in that exquisite moment it never mattered that my stomach rumbled or that I wore red velvet trousers. The sword was mightier than the freckle.
A middle-aged woman who was sitting beside my mother on opening night remarked, “He’d be such a handsome boy, isn’t it a shame about that nose?” and when she suggested plastic surgery my mother punched her in the stomach. I guess she had it coming.
On the final night, I was awarded the annual gold medal for excellence in dramatics and floated home on an eggplant-lined cloud. I had high hopes, now, that my classmates would quit calling me “Arab.” And they did. They started calling me “Nose.”
The next year, angry at a world of pug noses, I copped the gold medals in dramatics, oratory, debating and scholarship and was named editor-in-chief of the school paper. But that didn’t help, either: now everyone said I was conceited.
Meanwhile, with an “only child” on her hands, my mother intensified her efforts to cast me as the lead in her own production of “Only in Arabia.” And I guess that’s how I got to be an Arab expert and eventually a minion of USIA. But USIA was for the big boys, and as a little boy I remained thoroughly baffled by my status as a Yankee Doodle Sheik—a foreigner in the land of my birth.
4. Into Your Tent I’ll What…?
I GRADUATED from Brooklyn Prep with all the honors and all the complexes that an eighteen-year-old could possibly accumulate, and had even been asked to deliver the traditional Psychotatorian address at commencement. It was a brilliant oration, and everyone agreed afterwards that for a teen-ager it was “remarkably Freudian.” Which is probably because up until that point I had been remarkably frustrated. And that’s why I began dreaming about college.
College. Coonskin coats and Betty Coed. It was all part of my vision of the great American romance and I grappled it to my swarthy, Bedouin bosom, for I was accustomed to yearning for red-white-and-blue unattainables. And right then nothing was more unattainable than college and Betty Coed. As for the former, we hadn’t the money, and as for the latter, no “American” girl had ever been good enough for Mama’s Will-yam. She was determined to save me for a harem in Lebanon.
Occasionally, in grade school, I would be invited to a birthday party; but Mama, who knew we would be playing “spin the bottle,” always strait-jacketed my departures to these affairs with, “Don’t kiss any creepy Irish girls!” She could have saved her breath. Because of her Arab cooking mine was always garlicky, and I couldn’t get within a hundred yards of a creepy Irish girl, or even a creepy Swedish girl, much less kiss one. It was a little off-putting, I can tell you, because if there’s anyone who needs kissing games it’s a boy without a father, a country or a permanent address. But thanks to SenSen and Charley Barsumian, I did get some comfort.
Charley Barsumian was a twelve-year-old Armenian who sat next to me in one of the schools I attended during the seventh grade. Like Mama, his parents forbade dating, and once this rapport had been established between us, we spent many an hour plotting ways and means of punching our way out of the sexless paper bag of our confinement. Charley wasn’t terribly bright, but what he lacked in brains he made up in desire, and between us we finally came up with our “Double Feature” gambit. Simple but effective, it reeked of the cunning of the beast, which is rather frightening when you consider that we were only twelve. But we were desperate men. And this is what we did. On Saturday afternoons, we would sneak into the neighborhood movie house and climb to the second balcony, where we would pause for a few moments while our eyes grew accustomed to the flickering, semi-darkness. Then we would peer along the aisles until at last we found two girls who were unescorted, attractive and around our age—in that order. At this point we would split up, each of us approaching the girls from a different side of the aisle, and finally settling in the seats on either side of them. For the first ten minutes Charley and I wouldn’t utter a word, but then we would begin talking back and forth to one another, quietly, and in friendly, reassuring tones. We didn’t want to startle the girls. When we felt our presence had grown familiar to them, we would each, at a given signal, put an arm around the girl beside us. There were but two reactions possible: either the girls were too stunned to ask us to remove our arms, or they were all for it, and in either case we eased into a game of letterless post office. It was rather grand. And for all the girls knew I was Irish, although now that I think about it, for all I knew they were Chinese. Charley and I had an ethic about never asking their names and never leaving the theater with them. It was a seventh grade version of Brief Encounter with a new cast every Saturday.
By the time I entered eighth grade, I was the benevolent Jack the Ripper of the Orpheum balcony, but I was beginning to feel a bit self-conscious about the relative suddenness of my approach—partly because I was older and partly because I was now at another school and had lost Charley Barsumian. I lacked his animal brashness, and in its place I substituted my “Smith Brothers” plan. Reasoning that everyone coughs at least once during a performance, I would purchase a box of lozenges before entering, and then bide my time until my quarry coughed. When that happened, I would gallantly offer her a “Smith Brothers,” thus breaking the ice, and we would proceed from there as usual.
Only two things were wrong. One was girls with moist throats. The other was that the necking sessions were like the movies: reality was waiting outside on the sidewalks of New York. Out there, in the bright sunlight, the pale and pretty faces of the bobby-soxers seemed as unattainable as opium in the Children’s Section, and I would slouch homeward to spin out gigantic daydreams in which I was a kind of Arab Superman with an Irish face-lift, worshipped by adoring hordes of freckled faces with turned-up noses. In these dreams, Mama was Mother Machree, with silver threads among the gold adorning her equally freckled Irish face. This was always the hardest part to imagine, but I did work at it.
Once, while I was still in the eighth grade, my mother made contact with an Arab family living on East 29th Street between Second and Third Avenues, where the fish market used to be. Amongst this Arab brood was an attractive fourteen-year-old girl, and one day she came to visit us. The cunning thing clearly had the hots for me and as we talked over strong coffee drowned in hot milk, it appeared as though here at last was a girl upon whom my mother would place her Lebanese seal of approval. A sudden fire of expectation erupted on the kitchen table when my mother announced that she had to go out to “do some shopping.” The young lady and I greeted her announcement with loud silence, as I dreamed of a necking session without an Edmund Lowe movie in the background, and the maiden involved dreamed I know not what. But my mother never budged. She merely stared at me for a long, long while and then said in Arabic:
“Don’t kiss anybody.” The girl, who understood Arabic quite plainly, stood up and left. I never saw her again. “Creepy Egyptian,” rumbled my mother as she departed, and “Movies are better than ever,” I murmured to myself, swallowing the treacly dregs of my coffee. It was back to the balcony.
ii
By the time I graduated from the Prep I was on the point of accepting a permanent position as senior usher at the Orpheum, for college seemed out of the question. But my mother changed all that.
Mamma had once sold some quince jelly to a woman whose son attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and she got it into her head that I should apply there for admission. “But Mama, that’s a rich kids’ school!” I protested. “How we gonna pay?”
“You shurrup!” she roared back. “You gonna win scholarship!”
My mother was a deeply religious woman of vast and mighty faith, and you could bet on it that her faith always paid off—or else. I won the scholarship, which is a lucky thing for Georgetown, for if I hadn’t, there wouldn’t be a stone of it left standing.
In the fall of ’46 I was on my way south. Along with my sparse luggage Mama packed several halvah sandwiches, which I felt obliged to munch greedily all through the four-hour train ride to the University, but once on campus, I snuggled down to Shakespeare and Marlowe, Aquinas and the Hapsburgs, none of whom, it was my understanding, was even remotely connected with Lebanon. Was I blue? Are you out of your mind?
I plunged into dramatics again, and got the part of Danny in Night Must Fall. They let me do it with an Irish brogue and believe me, Sean, I was in seventh heaven. It was exhilarating to be someone else. And I guess that’s why I was good at dramatics: I needed to be someone else.
Which Way to Mecca, Jack? Page 3