Confessions Of An Honest Man
A Novel by Art Rosch
Copyright 2013
All characters in this book are either fictional or in the
public domain
Confessions Of An
Honest Man
A Novel by Art Rosch
Copyright 2015
All characters in this book are
either fictional or in the public domain
Chapter
One
Home
Is Where The Heart Is Not
1956:
University City, Missouri
There's always one of these kids at
every school playground. He's the one
with the "Kick Me" sign scotch -taped to his back. He knows people are laughing at him. His
temper ratchets up like beans in a pressure cooker. He'd better get control of that rage. Stuff it back inside himself.
He gets into trouble when the rage comes out. He does crazy things that have big consequences. He knows what the word means. He's endured plenty of Consequences. And they aren't funny, like on the TV show,
"Truth Or Consequences". He's
learning the trick: he's learning to put his feelings into a steel safe with
ten combinations and gleaming chrome wheels that turn smoothly. He's learning to lock away his
feelings. They're dangerous.
Aaron Kantro stands in line when the
team captains chose their players. He
waits slightly pigeon-toed, his shoulders held high and his hands fisted
tightly at his sides. At school he
can't compete with boys his own age, so he has been put back a year in gym
class. It doesn't help. They might as well have put him back with
the first graders. He is too little to
hurt anyone. If he punches a bully in
the nose the force is no more than a gnat landing on the punk's nostril. There's no power in Aaron's body. He barely weighs seventy pounds. He's uncoordinated. He isn’t obnoxious or funny. Without these ingredients for childhood
charisma, his place in the playground pecking order is at the bottom. Last.
"Kick Me" dangles from the back of his shirt on half an inch
of Scotch Tape just below the collar.
There's one of Aaron's type in every
school playground. He isn't afraid of
these jerks. He's more afraid of
himself than he is of anyone else, except his mother. He's terrified of his mother.
This was before Karate, before Kung
Fu. When he tries to fight back the
result is a pathetic windmilling of his arms.
He's so little that he is easily deflected. One day Barry Strampovitz eats a peanut butter sandwich with his
left hand while effortlessly holding Aaron out of range with the other. Aaron’s fists can only bounce against the
bully’s arm, without sufficient force to cause pain.
The dark shadows under Aaron’s eyes
give the impression that his soul is etched with some serious concern. His thoughtful demeanor earns him a
nickname. He is called “The
Professor”. It's not a happy
nickname. It isn’t like “Slugger”,
“Speedy” or “A.J”. One of Aaron’s
teachers started using it as a term of affection. The kids adopt it as their expression of contempt. When they drawl “Here comes the Professor”
they use a throaty mocking tone that is the currency of sarcasm and
insult. They draw things on sheets of
paper. Picture of Aaron eating feces that
drop straight out of a pig's butt.
"Place Foot Here" with an arrow pointing towards his behind,
directions to his "tuchus". They've drawn Aaron with a yarmulke and a
a tallis. He's on his knees glurping up
pig's turds. Lock away that temper. Put it in the big black safe. Otherwise, some day, he'll kill
someone. His mother says she wants to
kill him. Aaron wonders what it's like
to be executed. What's it like to know
that you have one minute to live? Count
down: sixty, fifty nine, fifty eight.
He would pray, but not to the Jewish God. He thinks there's a God but He lives at the center of the
universe, wherever that is. Jewish god,
Catholic god, Methodist god. That's
just stupid. People invented religions
so they could stick "Kick Me" signs on each other's backs. Aaron feels in his heart that there is a
great and beautiful god because birds sing beautiful songs. Because the night sky is majestic and
sometimes meteors whizz down from deep space.
Because the lowliest bug has patterns on its body that only a genius
could design. He thinks of God when he
crosses the Mississippi River over McKinley Bridge. He looks down at that huge powerful thing and knows that only God
could make something like that.
Aaron escapes into fantasies. At school, he spends most of his time
looking out the window with unfocused eyes.
Through the day he dreams heroic myths.
He is enraptured by Vikings. He
makes himself the leader of a crew of sea raiders. They charge castle walls, wearing helmets adorned with ox
horns. Inside the castle is a pretty
blonde princess who waits to be rescued by Aaron The Strong.
He always delays going home. His mother's usually at home. He is completely terrified of his mother.
Aaron’s
school is two blocks from the modest house on Parkway Court. Aaron has explored alternate routes. He walks around Greenwood Park, up to the
railroad tracks, then across the bridge.
He slides down the embankment and takes the foot bridge that leads
through backyards onto Ruth Street.
Another backyard path leads to the bottom of his street, which is called
a "court", where the houses form a closed semi-circle. Number 8024 is halfway up the eastern side
of Parkway Court, which is one of a twenty four street subdivision. None of the houses are more than five years
old. A sapling was planted in front of
each house. It will be twenty years
before they provide shade.
Hunger usually ends Aaron’s
meandering. If he's lucky, his brother
and sisters are home or his mom has gone shopping. He grabs a snack and then
slides like a ghost through his siblings' cries and demands and gets into the
room he shares with his little brother.
Avoiding his mother’s attention is the highest priority. Little currents of fear race along his
nerves when he thinks of Esther Kantro.
Aaron has a friend named Jeffrey
Rubin, who lives five houses up the street.
When he goes to Jeffrey's house the atmosphere is so different that he
can barely understand it. Jeffrey’s mom
cracks bad jokes, makes cookies and tries to hug and kiss her wriggling son as
he pretends to try to escape. Things
aren't tight and quiet at Jeffrey's house, things move along in a way that's
actually fun. At least, it's fun until
Jeffrey's dad comes home, but Jeffrey's dad works out of town a lot, so it's
possible to pretend he doesn't exist.
Jeffrey's mom is very physical, a hugger,
a smoocher, sweeping kids into the air with her husky arms. When Mrs. Rubin hugs and kisses Aaron, he
doesn’t try to escape. He shrinks from
her a little bit. Mrs. Rubin’s
affection gives him an odd feeling, as though he is touching dry ice. He likes it but doesn't know how to hold
it. When he has to leave, to go home,
he feels a wrenching sadness.
Sometimes, as he leaves the Rubin's house, he starts to cry and has to
press his chin into his bony chest, press it hard, hiding his eyes from the world
until the urge to cry stops and he can walk to his own house. Leaving the Rubins' is so hard that he's
becoming reluctant to go there at all.
The attraction isn't really Jeffrey, who's kind of stupid. The attraction is a home that isn't one
continuous scream of terror.
Aaron’s mother frequently says, as if
to excuse her rages, "I love you the only way I can." He doesn’t understand what that means. He's sure his mother does not love him. When she says she loves him “the only way-I
can”, that must mean there is something wrong with him.
Aaron is certain of his father’s
love. He wants to see his dad, wants
dad to be at home all the time, wants his dad to talk to him, ask him questions
about what he's thinking. He wants his
dad to understand that he isn’t stupid, he's just…just too mad to think,
maybe. He wants his dad to tell him
things are okay. He isn’t afraid of his
dad. Maybe love is just not being
afraid. When his father's home, Esther
is a different person. She doesn't
shake him or scream at him, she doesn't squeeze his arms until fingernail marks
show.
More than anything, Aaron wants his
father to be at home.
Aaron can’t have what he wants. Aaron is getting used to this state of being
denied what he wants. It seems like
it's always his mother who blocks him, taking away the things he wants.
It is a secret, this fighting that
takes place when his father is away.
Esther makes threats. “I’ll kill you if your father hears of
this”, she says one day. She is
twisting a wet dishtowel in her rough red hands. Aaron sees his neck between those hands. He is seeing the thought in Esther’s
mind.
While Aaron tries to banish this
image, his mother enters her continuing tirade. It is a conversation she has with her anger disguised as a conversation
she's having with her son. In some
abstract way Aaron knows that his mother issn't really speaking to HIM, she is
speaking to invisible monsters in the air.
“How did the toaster get knocked to the floor? It’s broken! How did that
happen? How? HOW? Your dad better not find out about
this! I’m so mad I could kill you! Dad has enough on his mind. He works all day and half the night, and he
doesn’t need stories about your behavior.
Running around the house flying like an airplane, knocking things down
right and left. You’ll give your father
a heart attack!” Her voice rises in
pitch and volume. “He’ll drop dead and
it’ll be your fault! Is that what you
want? Is it?”
The word "kill" is as common
as pennies in the currency of the Kantro's domestic language. Killing, murder, suicide, death death
death....the siblings scream at each other, "I'll kill you," and
"no you won't, I'll kill you first!"
. Sometimes
Aaron slaps his hands to his ears. No
no no no! His father can’t die! He won’t tell, won’t utter a word about this
strange …strange…situation. That's a
good word. It's a situation. This is a new word for Aaron. He likes to discover new words. It is one of those pleasures that comes from
inside his mind. This is a way of thinking
that he enjoys. It's the USE of his
mind that he enjoys.
Aaron will protect his father at all
costs. It isn’t dad’s fault he has to
work so much. Mother always says it:
money’s more important than anything, even love!
It isn’t dad’s fault that he goes to
work so early and comes back so late.
It isn’t dad’s fault that Aaron gets so mad he breaks dishes and never
does his homework and threw a baseball through the living room window.
The problem is that without dad at
home, mother does anything she wants.
It depends on the way she feels.
She whips him with a belt on his behind. She makes him stay all day in the dark closet with the door
closed. He curls up into a ball and
listens to her talk. Her voice is
louder and then softer as she moves about the house. She tells him what he is and doesn't spare the curse words. He's stupid, lazy, ugly, a disappointment, a
worthless no good son of a bitch and it would have been better if he hadn't
been born.
Sometimes Aaron’s mom feels bad and
sometimes she feels good but it's spooky good, there's something wrong with how
she feels good. She dances by herself
around the living room, singing corny old songs, and then she puts on her mink
coat and drives to the stores in Clayton and Lake Forest. When she comes home she moves so fast she
looked like two looks like two people at once while she hides the stuff she
bought. She moves the heavy coats aside
and gets into the deep shelves at the back of the closet. She pushes at bags and boxes until she makes
room for the new shoes, earrings and bracelets.
She buys a lot of stuff and Aaron
wonders if she is the reason why dad works all the time. Dad is scared of her, Aaron realizes. He lets her do whatever she wants rather
than start one of those terrible fights where screams get so loud the neighbors
call the police and mom hits dad so hard his eyes go black.
Aaron doesn'’t blame his father. It's just bad luck. He has a vague knowledge that his mother
hasn't always been this way. She was
different when she and dad were first married.
She looks different in the pictures.
She looks happy and..and...nice!
What had happened to change her from a
nice person to such a mean person?
Chapter
Two
Fighting
For The Right
By late September school had already become boring. Aaron doesn't have the attention span to
hold on to subjects that aren't related to his interests. Numbers, chemicals, categories, all these
things whoosh past him without leaving an impression.
Then,
on the last day of the month, a notice appears on the main board just outside
the principal's office. It has symbols
that Aaron recognizes as musical notes and a floaty cartoon of several men in
top hats and tuxedos, tootling on various instruments.
MUSIC APPRECIATION. An elective course available to fourth
graders begins in two weeks. Those who
are interested should sign their names on the numbered sheet attached. A pencil dangles from a string. This IS interesting and promises to break
the daily monotony of teachers' droning voices. Aaron picks up the bright orange nub and signs his name.
He waits eagerly. Finally, after the passage of two weeks, his
home room teacher hands out a number of sealed notices. One of them is for Aaron and he finds
notification that today, yes, TODAY! At one thirty the kids who signed up for
the class are to go to the cafeteria.
One thirty comes and Aaron is in the
biology lab with Mr. Warren, the science teacher. He presents his note. The
teacher scans it and nods Aaron towards the door.
Aaron finds himself traversing the
near-empty halls towards the cafeteria.
A few kids converge on the double glass doors leading into the expanse
of the lunch facility. They push the
doors open and find an area where the long rectangular tables have been cleared
away to make room for a chalk board, an upright piano and three rows of chairs.
The students find their seats with the
usual clamor. After getting a glance at
the teacher, kids are bumping one another to sit in the back row. They've done their lightning appraisal of
the instructor and they don't like what they see: the music teacher looks
mean.
It seems pretty stupid to Aaron to try
and get away from this strange looking woman.
He takes a seat in the front row at the right corner, next to the window. He counts the attendees: eleven
students. Eleven out of a total of one
hundred ninety seven third and fourth graders at Daniel Boone School. Of those eleven, Aaron guesses with accurate
realism, there might be four who are actually interested in Music Appreciation.
The two minute bell rings before third
period. Wooden floorboards in the halls
amplify chatter and the sounds of hurrying feet. The staccato booming quickly dies as classroom doors close behind
tardy students.
The teacher stands next to the
blackboard with one hand on her hip, the other holding a long piece of chalk
that she passes through her fingers with intricate dexterity. It twirls from thumb and index finger down
to the middle finger, where it stops and whizzes around that long digit and
somehow balances on its point in the teacher's palm. The chalk then continues and finds its way to the pinky and
returns the way it has come. The
teacher's fingers look like five perfectly trained snakes.
Aaron is transfixed by this skilful
movement. Under his desk he attempts to
work the pattern with his pencil, which he instantly drops and just as
instantly picks up.
The kids are wary. A couple of girls whisper the word
“ugly”. Aaron looks at the new teacher
and tries the word ugly, but it doesn’t fit.
He rummages his mind for a word to describe the woman. Not ugly.
Not scary. Not mean. Not repulsive.
Then the word comes to him. It's a word he didn’t know he knew, but
somehow he knows what it means. Maybe
he read it in David Copperfield.
The word is Homely.
The teacher is homely. Her hair is in a net. Its red brown coils are tucked in an orderly
bun. She has large ears. She wears a green blouse and a pink sweater
that covers a long bony torso. The
sweater is too short at the waist and buttoned to the top over her large adam’s
apple. The long brown skirt looks as if
it was made a hundred years ago. There
are a pair of checked men’s pajama pants visible beneath the hem of the
skirt. The grey and green flannel pants
swish over white tennis shoes as she walks.
“Take your seats, take your seats,”
the woman says in voice that's more like song than like speach. When the students sort themselves out, the
teacher begins to write her name on the blackboard with brisk muscular strokes.
“I am,” she says as she taps the chalk
rapidly on the board. Tap tap. Tap tap tap. There is a pause as she finishes printing her name. “I am….Mrs. Leek.”
There's an immediate titter throughout
the class. Aaron agrees it's a funny
name but feels that it would be rude to laugh at another person's name.
Mrs. Leek turns and puts her hands on
her hips. The laughter diminishes but
doesn't die out. Mrs. Leek looks at the
students as if she could stab them with her eyes. Only one boy continues laughing.
He's a big dumb kid named Bennie Shapiro. His eyes are closed and his head points towards the ceiling as he
brays like a donkey.
“YOU!” The woman points to Benny Shapiro. She is holding the white chalk as if it can beam death-rays. “Do you think there’s something funny about
my name?”
Benny’s face comes down and turns
almost crimson. His long legs are
splayed out beneath the chair in front of him, his shoes almost pointing in
opposite directions. “Ummm,”
Benny murmurs, “I was just, uh…”
“And your name is?” The teacher demands. She takes a small pad of paper from her
skirt pocket and holds a pen over it.
Benny is stunned into silence.
“Can someone tell me this young man’s
name?”
“Bennie Shapiro” emerges timidly from several children.
Mrs. Leek writes quickly on her pad,
tears the leaf free and walks to Bennie Shapiro. She folds the paper once and hands it to the boy. “You are dismissed from this class, Mister
Shapiro. Permanently. I don’t tolerate rudeness. Take this note to your teacher. I’m informing her of why you are no longer
in this class. I’ll want her signature,
and a signature from one of your parents.”
Bennie is confused and scared. He pulls his legs back under him and gets
up. He looks around, appealing to his
classmates. None meet his eyes.
Discipline problems are thus ended in
Music Appreciation Class.
Aaron has never encountered a person
so strange as Mrs. Leek. She sings
rather than speaks. When kids are
outside her danger radius, she is a ripe target for mockery. Everywhere in the school some piping voice
imitates her trademark delivery.
“Students!”, they sing, “Who can tell
me the name of this music?
Students! What instrument do you
hear in this solo?” After two weeks the kids shave the imitation to a lilting
utterance of the single word in two notes: Students! They become like bird calls, emitting from the playground,
answered from the second floor, again from the gym. “Students!”, they sing, and follow with fits of giggling.
Mrs. Leek doesn’t care. She is terrifying. This capacity to instill fear is a combination of her stunning
dour face and the expressions of contempt she can use to bore straight through
a student’s soul. Her lips are
extremely full and marked with cracked vertical lines. Her skin has the texture of pitted
leather. Sometimes her face looks like
a tree knot, a place where a branch has failed to sprout.
Her teaching methods are strict and
direct. She doesn't mind getting wrong
answers. At least they are
answers. One day she points a yardstick
at a boy named Mark Rabinowitz.
“Can you tell me, Mister Rabinowitz,
what German composer struggled with deafness throughout his life?”
The boy yawns, blinks, appeares to
think for a moment. “Umm, uh, Fats
Domino?"
Mrs. Leek pops the yardstick across a
desktop, making it snap so loud everyone jumps.
“All I want to know is whether or not
you are alive!” the woman says. “I’m
not asking so much. Make a guess, take
a chance. You can’t look more stupid
than you do now. ‘Duh, um, Fats
Domino?,’”she mocks. “Beethoven’s
Balls, most of you kids are dumb as fire hydrants.”
Mrs. Leek’s curse has brought all the
students to a state of fascinated alertness.
“I suppose I’ll get fired now,” she
says calmly. “I’ll only miss two or
three of you.”
Her
eyes meet Aaron’s and she gives him the slightest wink. Aaron’s insides relax with unfamiliar
gratitude as he realizes that he will be one of those few students.
The incident passes and the eccentric
teacher does not get fired. She continues
the arduous task of instilling music into the lives of her students.
She brings record albums from her
collection. One day she brings 45’s by
Fabian and Elvis. She plays them side
by side with old records by Mississippi blues men with funny names. Blind Willy this. Pegleg Joe that.
“You see how the rhythms and chords
are really the same?” she asks. Two or
three sets of eyes are alert. Aaron
Kantro nods but is too paralyzed with shyness to speak.
When the teacher plays Benny Goodman
or Duke Ellington, Aaron feels like he is on a rocket ship. He thinks a fuse has been lit under his
chair. The music gives him goose
bumps. He feels a strange warmth at the
back of his neck.
One day Mrs. Leek brings an album in a
sleeve painted in wild abstract colors.
“Students!” she said in her two-note
fanfare. “Without further ado, I bring
you ‘The Prelude To The Rite of Spring’, by Igor Stravinsky.”
She puts the 33 rpm record on the
spindle of the school’s little blue Zenith record player. She turns the knob and the record drops to
the turntable. The tone arm
automatically lifts and positions itself over the rim of the album. It drops onto the vinyl surface and there
are a few seconds of crackling static before the music begins.
An instrument plays, solo. Maybe it's an oboe, or a bassoon. It seems to Aaron as if it's calling someone
or something, maybe a bird in the forest.
Soon its call is answered by another bird, and another. The music gathers power, momentum, and
starts battering itself like a pair of huge mountain rams clashing horn to
horn.
Nine kids put their hands over their
ears, slump, jerk, make pig faces. Mrs.
Leek tolerates this behavior. She knows
she is asking a lot.
One child, Aaron, is transfixed. His eyes go soft and distant.
Mrs. Leek lets the music play for
three or four minutes, then gently turns down the volume until it is
silent. Taking care not to call Aaron
“Professor”, she asks him what he thinks of the music.
Aaron is aware of the other students
watching. He thinks it best to shrug
and say nothing. He fits in better when
he pretends to be stupid.
From the first day of class, Aaron has
felt Mrs. Leek's attention. He can tell
that she knows something about him, and that she likes him. She does nothing to single him out, nothing
to embarrass him. He would never admit
it to other kids, but he likes her. Now
he is overcome by his need to share his feelings with the teacher. She is homely, but Aaron sees a kindness in
her face that makes the homeliness vanish.
"It sounds so weird!”, Aaron
says... “I can see, like, giant birds calling and dragons dancing, and planets
moving through space. There are spooky
vines and flowers growing really fast and then when it got really loud and, um,
rhythmic I, ”…he pauses, looks around the room, and his voice tapers away in
embarrassment.
Mrs. Leek's gaze penetrates him
thoughtfully. Again, she restrains
herself from calling him “Professor”.
It is such a perfect nickname for the serious little boy.
"That’s good, Aaron,” is all she
says. “That’s very good."
Mrs. Leek enters Aaron’s name as a
candidate for the Comprehensive Musical Aptitude Test. This search for young talent emerges from
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and its bundle of civic programs. The test to discover promising musicians
between eight and ten years old is the obsession of Saul Lefkowitz, first
violinist and Concert Master of the orchestra.
The distinguished violinist has made careers blossom through the decades
of his life. He is adept at finding
grant money and has kept the Youth Orchestra thriving for more than twenty
years.
, Mrs. Leek is supposed to give Aaron a
note to be signed by his parents, a simple consent form. She signs it herself, forging the signature
of Aaron’s father, and sends it on. There is something wrong in Aaron’s family. She doesn’t have to be a genius to know
this. Her experience has taught her
that talent often emerges from trouble.
She isn’t taking any chances.
She knows that this child, this one thin, sad-looking child, has a real
passion for music. He has been born
with the soul of an artist.
Aaron receives the precious invitation
with its date, time and address. The
conspiracy is unspoken. Aaron knows he
has been granted a favor. He doesn't
want his mother to know about the test.
She will tell him he can't go, and she will scream at his dad until he
gives in. He knows that if something
good comes of this test, he will have to fight for its possession. His mother ALWAYS says no. He has given up asking for things. He lives an alternate life, completely
beyond the ken of his family. He has
become a precocious virtuoso of bus, streetcar and other forms of
transportation. He does everything in
his power to avoid going home. He
spends late afternoons watching the fifty cent double feature at the Varsity
Theatre.
On a Saturday morning in early
October, the chosen students are allowed into the presence of the maestro.
The big dark auditorium swallows the
fifty children. They sit in the first
rows, just below the stage. They can
see into the mysterious empty orchestra pit.
The stage and front rows are lit.
The rest of the vast chamber is in darkness.
Saul Lefkowitz sits dangling his legs
from the polished teak stage, holding a violin in his left hand, idly touching
a string with his pinky finger.
The concertmaster is a short bald man
with a plump torso and eyebrows that fly upward like flames from his bright
blue eyes. He is a familiar type. Aaron dismisses him as completely
unremarkable. He reminds him of his
uncle Morris, the one who farts so much that it isn't funny any more.
When the children are seated and
quiet, Saul Lefkowitz picks up a bow, puts the violin to his neck and begins
playing with incredible agility and fire.
He is completely transformed!
His body rocks like that of an Orthodox Jew in prayer, his elbow slicing
the air, the bow riding across the strings, bouncing into the air, then
skipping like flat stones thrown across water.
All of this motion unleashes a cascade of precise yet passionate musical
sound. Aaron has never seen anyone who
possesses this magic, this amazing skill!
Aaron Kantro promises himself that
some day, he too will have this intangible thing, this Genius. He doesn't care how hard it will be, how
much work it requires, how much time, how much sacrifice.
Having gotten the attention of the
aspiring musicians, Saul Lefkowitz has a bundle of sheets passed around and
begins to administer The Test.
An hour later, the violinist snaps his
case shut, unplugs the tape recorders, the tone generators, and stuffs the
envelope of marked tests into his briefcase.
"Thank you very much,
children. It will take a couple weeks
to process these scores. You will be
notified if you qualify for a place in the Youth Orchestra. I'm sure you all did very well and I wish
there was room for every single one of you in the orchestra. Fech!
It can’t be. I will tell you now
that perhaps five of you, at the most, will qualify. So I’m just asking you not to get your hopes up. And most of all, just because you don’t get
a place in the Youth Orchestra doesn’t mean you should give up an interest in
music. If you already play an
instrument, keep practicing! And those
of you who don’t, find an instrument you enjoy, get a teacher and learn
music! It’s wonderful!"
Aaron finds the test stimulating but
not difficult. The Maestro plays a
series of five notes, then, after waiting a few moments he plays three more
series of five notes and asks whether A, B,or C is identical to the first
series he had played. The Maestro plays
recordings of music. He tells the
students that Piece Number One are in a “Major Key” and Piece Number Two is in
a “Minor Key.” Then he asks in which
kind of key is “Piece Number Three.”
The test continues. Which chord is identical to the preceding
chord? A, B, C, or D? It's effortless. Aaron knows the answers.
Aaron quickly marks his test
sheet. He notices a boy in the row
ahead of him who is his equal in speed.
The boy is relaxed and marks his test sheet with nonchalance. As Aaron emerges from the auditorium into
the light of an autumn afternoon, this boy approaches him, open and confident.
"Hi, my name is Lester
Stiers. I'll bet you did pretty
good. I was watching, I can tell. I already know about chords and intervals,
my dad taught me. I’m lucky, my dad's a
really good musician."
Aaron isn't used to friendliness. He blushes, and fights an impulse to turn
away. He forces himself to respond.
"I'll bet you did pretty good
yourself. What instrument do you want
to play?"
"I’m already practicing
woodwinds. I'm gonna be a tenor sax
player, like my dad. He's a jazz
musician. That’s why I’m named Lester…after
Lester Young? You know who that was?”
Aaron makes a sleepy-eyed face and
pretends to hold a big saxophone sideways.
"Doo ta dooo ta doo", he tries to imitate one of The Prez'
licks.
Lester’s face went slack with amazement. “Wow! We must be the
youngest hipsters in the world! I get
this all from my dad. He’s so
frustrated sometimes. To make a living
he has to play a lot of schlock, you know, Mickey Mouse, bubblegum, ticky tick,
but that’s life for a jazz musician.
Hey, what school do you go to?"
"Daniel Boone."
"You mean with Mrs. Leek?"
Aaron laughs. "Yeah, Mrs. Leek. Everybody hates her, but I think she's
okay."
"My dad says she's nutty as a
drunken camel but she’s a bitchin' clarinetist.” Lester mouths the obscenity
routinely. “I'm coming to your school
in January. Dad's got a gig in Gaslight
Square, and we just moved to U. City.
I’ll be in the fourth grade.
What about you?”
“Me too,” said Aaron. He hopes they will be in the same
homeroom. Aaron is desperate for a
friend, and he’s never met anyone that he likes so much, so fast.
“So…. guess I'll see you at Daniel
Boone School," Lester says breezily.
A car, driven by a woman who must be Lester’s mother, is pulling to the
curb.
Lester gets into the car. As he waveds goodbye, Aaron can tell that
Lester’s mother is going to offer him a ride.
He is overcome by shyness. He
quickly disappears into the crowd and waits for the bus.
When a week has passed, Aaron takes to
racing home from school so that he has a chance to be first to the
mailbox. He has said nothing about the
test, has betrayed none of his hope.
He is filled with dread.
When the result arrive eighteen days
later, it is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Max Kantro.
This is a complication Aaron has not
anticipated. Why didn't he think of
this? Oh, what a dummy he is! He can't open it. His mother will be the first to open it.
A hot poker of fear prods his
heart. He can't remember when or how it
began, this war with his mother, but he knows that if he likes something, if
it's fun, if it pleases him, if it gives him a sense of mastery, skill,
control, gratification, then he will have to fight for it. He knows these feelings if not the
words. He has no idea why he is locked
in this contest with his mother, why it bothers her so much to see him happy. He accepts it as one of life's dark
mysteries.
He places the mail on the end table in
the den. Then he sets himself to
wait. He is like a statue. He has no attention for television, for
books. He is preparing for battle.
Esther comes whistling into the house
two hours later, arms full of packages.
Aaron knows by the whistle and the packages that his mother is
"up". This isn’t good. He’d rather face her “down” than her “up”.
When she's "down" she is mindlessly brutal. When she is "up" she is unpredictable. She is capable of anything. She's devious. This is a word he has looked
up in the dictionary. “Devious:
departing from the proper or accepted way.
Not straightforward. Deceptive
or crooked.”
Esther glances at her son, whose eyes
are pointed at the television. Aaron
recognizes an episode of Sky King, but it is nothing to him but moving figures
and noise.
"Hello, Aaron."
"Hi," Aaron mumbles, seeing
nothing.
Esther Kantro drops the packages on
the couch and hangs her coat in the closet.
She is dark-haired, dark eyed, stout, powerful. Her nose is like the blade of an ax.
"Did you have a good day?"
"Yes, fine." Aaron's voice sounds as if it has no breath
behind it. When he was younger he was
wild and angry. That had been shaken
out of him. Now he is quiet. He has learned stealth, guile, even
treachery. These are his weapons, his
only means of waging war.
He has put the letter in the middle of
the pile.
Esther gets organized and comes to the
table and begins going through bills, advertisements and letters. She stands over the trash can, dropping
envelopes from her hand to the grey bin.
Aaron watches her every movement from
the corner of his eye. He sees his
mother reach the distinctive grey and blue striped envelope containing the
letter from Saul Lefkowitz. She opens
it and reads it. She makes a little splutting noise with her lips, puts the
paper back into the envelope, crushes the thing into a wad and throws it after
the junk mail.
Aaron's heart begins to pound with
terror. He knew this would happen! He knew it!
He will wait until she leaves the room,
he'll get the letter and show it to his dad when he comes home. That's his plan.
"Look, the trash is full,
Aaron. Why don't you take it out?"
Aaron lifts the plastic cylinder full
of trash and heads for the back door.
His mother follows him.
"Get the other cans. It's
collection day tomorrow. We'll put
everything in the trunk and take it to Shepman's so his truck doesn't wake your
dad in the morning."
Lev Shepman is the garbage man. He owns a dump on the other side of the
highway. Taking the garbage to Shepman
in his filthy grey jumpsuit is unthinkable, ridiculous.
Aaron hasn't reckoned with his
mother’s powerful psychic antennae. Is
she some kind of witch? How can she
know?
She knows. She has been deceived.
Aaron has achieved something without her permission. He has lied and concealed things. That means Aaron wants something very
badly. Esther is aggrieved; she radiates
outrage, but says nothing. She will
simply eradicate the letter before Max comes home. She can tear it to pieces but that is too simple. She wants Aaron to participate in its
loss. She wants him to know that his
desires
are nothing to her but garbage.
Briefly, mother's and son's eyes
meet. Aaron turns away, lest she see
his hate and his desire.
Esther follows Aaron from room to room
as he gathers the trash and puts it into a big plastic bag. His heart beats painfully against his rib
cage, like mallet blows on some tympani of foreboding.
When everything is collected, Esther,
dangling her keys, escorts Aaron towards the car.
He has to do it, now. Hefting the sack on his scrawny shoulder he
lurches down the driveway, dodges a car, cuts through the neighbors' garden,
squeezes through a hedge, and is gone.
As he adjusts the clumsy weight of the sack, Aaron hears a muffled
squawk of outrage from his mother. He
knows she's too fat to run. He makes it
down into The Dell, a tiny copse of wood and water that has yet to fall under
the developers' tractors.
Terrified and exultant, he recovers
the letter from the bag, straightens it out and reads it by the fading light.
"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kantro,” it
says. "It gives me great pleasure
to inform you that your son, Aaron, achieved one of the highest scores for
musical aptitude in the history of the Comprehensive Musical Aptitude
Test. In the entire state, among
thousands of children, Aaron ranks in the upper one tenth of a percentile. I would strongly encourage you to enroll
your son in the Youth Orchestra. We
have openings at present for violin, flute, bassoon, trumpet and
percussion. With his enrollment comes
instruction in his chosen instrument, free of charge. In the future, should Aaron express a desire, he will be given
training in Harmony, Theory and advanced musical forms. This is thanks to the Zellman Endowment,
whose funds have been set aside to encourage those students with special
promise. Please fill out and sign the
enclosed form and return it to me in the provided envelope. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Saul Lefkowitz, Concertmaster, St.
Louis Symphony Orchestra. "
The letter is crumpled, damp and
stained with coffee grounds. Aaron
looks at the form, a questionnaire with check boxes and signature lines. He studies it carefully, then sponges the
sheets dry on his shirt and folds them.
Aaron hugs the letter to his chest.
He laughs, hugely and silently and dances in a little hopping circle,
throwing his arms to the sky, showing the letter to the gods in Heaven. Nothing like this has ever happened to
him. He has never been praised, never
succeeded, never been special.
Now he is someone! Upper one tenth of a percentile! That means he is better than ninety nine
point nine percent of all the other fourth graders in the state. Oh God!
An area in him is opening up, a place, a scent, a taste, a way of being
that he has never known. Victory!
It is dark. There is an owl that lives in The Dell. It hoots, a familiar and beloved tone. To Aaron the sound means autumn.
It means Halloween, burning leaves, Thanksgiving. It brings the spirit of the Indians to his
imagination. They are laden with
pumpkins and sheaves of corn. Something
about this time of year shivers his very core with a thrill of olden days, of
uncut forests and great running rivers.
Once, as he was playing Army with the other
kids, the owl took a giant white crap right on his head. He didn’t take it personally. He loves the owl, and wonders where it will
go when the tractors come.
He still has to go home, to face his
mother's wrath, his father's weakness.
He isn't in the Youth Orchestra yet.
He has pushed defiance to a new level.
He knows, from bitter experience, that his mother will make him pay.
Through the trees he can see the
lights coming on. He can hear the cars
of fathers coming home from work, and knows that his father is still some hours
away. He waits, trying to re-read the
letter, but it's now too dark.
At last, seizing his courage as if it
is a brick and he a workman, he starts home, with the letter and consent form
folded neatly in his pocket. He emerges
from the trees into the suburban night.
Cicadas buzz and the ghostly glow of television light escapes from
curtained windows. When he gets to the
next-door neighbors’ garden, he sees with great relief that his father's car is
in the driveway.
His parents are in the den, watching
television. Max has his supper on a
portable tray. None of Aaron's siblings
are present.
As the boy lets himself in the back
door, Esther is silent.
"Where on earth have you
been?" Max Kantro is concerned but
not angry. Aaron is never frightened of his father. He advances, avoiding his mother's glare,
and holds out the letter.
"Mom threw this in the
trash. I had to get it back."
"What are you talking about?”
Esther protests. “There was only junk
mail. I threw nothing......"
Max sees his son cringe away from his
wife, and it hurts, but he doesn't know what to do. He takes the letter. He
wants to take the boy onto his lap, but that isn't his way, has never been the
way in his family. They don’t touch,
don’t hug.
As he reads, the wrinkles in his
face change direction. A proud blush
flows from his neck to the top of his head.
He had been exhausted. Now
there's energy in him. His poor lost
son may have found something to guide him through his difficult childhood.
"Look at this, Esther. How could
this happen? He scored in the upper tenth percent. My god, this is fantastic.
Weren't you looking, Esther?
I've heard about these tests from everybody down at the deli. It's become the big status thing, to get
your kid into the Youth Orchestra. It’s
a scholarship! Aaron, why didn't you
say something? I didn't even know you
took the test."
Esther sits with her shoulders rigid,
her nose wrinkled. “Let me
see." Max hands the letter to his
wife. Aaron blanches, imagining that
she is about to tear the missive to pieces.
Esther's expression remains fixed as
she reads the letter. "That's very
good, Aaron. We're very proud of
you." She hands the letter
daintily back to her husband, holding it with the tips of her fingers. "Music....hmm..uh huh." She says the word "music" as if it
refers to a piece of liver in a butcher’s freezer case.
Max smiled. He wasn’t fully aware of the tangled wires that gripped his wife
and son. "I can't wait to tell my
sisters. One of my customer's kids took
the test. He got a polite form
letter. Nothing."
Esther brightened t at the thought of
having something over her sisters-in-law.
Aaron knew the signs; he knew that a battle had been won.
"Have you decided on an
instrument?" Max referred to the
letter. "Look, you can......"
"Drums." Aaron made this announcement as boldly as he
could. “See,” he pointed at the application sheet, “It says ‘percussion’ but
that means drums and everything about drums.”
Mrs. Leek had shown the class a movie of the Count Basie orchestra, and
when Aaron saw the drummer, Sonny Payne, dashing his way through "The One
O’clock Jump,” he found a new hero, a new kind of icon, a sweaty madman at the
helm of a giant ship, a drummer-captain commanding the guns of the brass
section, summoning the torpedoes of the woodwinds, driving it, steaming ahead,
locking with the bass player in a majestic stomping wildness that thrilled
every atom of his being.
"Drums," he said, hammering
the word into the firmament like a mountain climber planting a flag.
"Well, okay," Max began, but
Esther interrupted.
"Anything but drums, Max. That would drive me crazy. My migraines...I couldn't stand it.....no
way can it be drums."
Max saw a sudden bleakness ripping
away the triumph in his son's face.
Beside him, smoky thoughts wafted from the crypt of Esther's mask-like
countenance. The battle that had been
proceeding between his wife and his firstborn son revealed itself in all its
frost and frustration. The naked enmity
that existed between the people he loved emerged like a buried archive from a
melted avalanche. He understood
suddenly that he was in a delicate situation.
"Aaron," he said, knowing
that this would be a huge disappointment for his son. "Choose another instrument.
Your mother's only being fair.
She has it rough with her headaches.
Maybe in a few years, maybe her headaches will get better...." his
eyes pleaded back at his son's pleading.
Something ripped and gave way, and
Aaron accepted his lot. He had
anticipated as much. It could never
happen, that he would get what he really wanted. It would always be the consolation prize.
"Can I play trumpet?" he asked, timidly. "I want to play jazz, like Satchmo and
Dizzy."
Where on earth was a nine year old
getting this stuff? Max looked toward
Esther, and saw an objection perched on the edge of her lips.
"Listen to that," Esther
said, her spite gaining momentum.
"He wants to play Schvahtze music.
Not respectable music, not Lawrence Welk or Mantovani. He has to be a bum and go around with the
coloreds. What kind of life would that
be? Imagine me having to say to my
friends, ‘My son, the jazz musician'.
He’ll bring schvahtzes right here, into this house. He’ll be nothing but a bum and a dope
fiend. He'll end up like Mark Holtzman,
playing bar mitzvahs and weddings with a bottle of gin in his pocket, nothing
but a schlepper."
"Esther, for Christ's sake he's
nine years old! He's not making a
career choice."
"All right, then, but if I have
migraines, he'll have to go out to the garage or down in the basement. And there will be no schvahtzes in this
house except Etta and the lawn mower boy when he needs to use the spare
bathroom."
"Let him play the trumpet,
Esther, it'll be good for him. God
knows he' s no athlete and not much of a student."
Max knew all about Esther’s racial
views. She hated coloreds, she hated
all Goyim, and she was a self-hating anti-semite. She had a special terror of schvahtzes, as they were called in
the local Yiddish dialect. As a child
she had witnessed a robbery, she had seen her father shoot a black man. It was one of many searing memories from her
childhood. The things she didn’t
remember, or half-remembered, were far more disturbing.
Aaron sagged, limp with relief. The battle, for now, was over. He had gotten something, something big. He would be in the Youth Orchestra.
