“Actually, Father never asked her to convert,” Tracey continued. “Never said a word.”
“Then why’d she do it?” Robert asked, closing his eyes, hoping for relief from Tracey’s unrelenting focus. No wonder Van Dorn had taken three showers a day.
“My father can look at you in this very particular way he has,” Tracey said softly, “so that pretty soon you’re sure he knows everything that’s wrong with you, or ever will be wrong with you, in your whole damned life. And you want to do whatever you can to make that look go away. It could drive a person crazy, Vishniak. Take it from me.”
“I think I understand,” Robert said, opening his eyes.
“You do?” Tracey asked, his question balanced there, gratefully, in the air between them.
“Yeah,” Robert replied. He had lived with that look for months now, hoping that by self-correction he could make it go away.
Tracey stood, picked up the blanket at the end of Robert’s bed and, to Robert’s surprise, covered him with it, thanking him for he knew not what.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Summer of ’66
By the time he got home, his mother already had a plan for how he could make more money over the summer. Within a day of his arrival, she reminded him that he would have to make as much as possible, as much as all the other years combined, because of how much he’d overspent. If only she’d known all the parties, movies, all the drinking he’d passed up—but she could only see the bank balance, and the four hundred dollars asked of them for next year, plus the books he’d have to buy if he were to go premed. He’d promised his uncle Frank he’d work for him again, but Stacia had talked Frank into taking Barry instead.
She had contacted Vishniak’s baby sister, whom everyone called Henry, and her husband, Danny, a musician who drove a cab in New York and always knew about underground work. The couple lived in the West Village because it was cheap then, and Danny said he could help Robert get a hack license. Vishniak’s siblings were all for repaying their debts to him and his family —Vishniak had supported and counseled all of them for years, even after his marriage, giving advice and, at times, small handouts. Even Stacia had never objected to this—blood was blood. But now it was time to cash in on those favors.
Robert could sleep on the couch of their place, Henry said, on West Fourth between Sixth Avenue and Washington Square Park. Frank tried to persuade them it was too dangerous, a young man that age driving by himself around a city like Manhattan at night. Stacia ignored him. She was certainly nothing like the other women in her family, who held on to their children for as long as possible.
Robert was happy to have an excuse to leave—would have jumped out of airplanes that summer, or swallowed fire, not to have to hear her with those words, the imploring angry chant make money, make money, make money, and the lectures that went with them. Barry got around Stacia by staying out of her way, hiding mostly in the basement. Barry had discovered drugs early, and that summer he showed his older brother how to roll a joint.
The fourth-floor walk-up was a sweatbox; even Henry and her husband called it that, affectionately. They were so in love that nothing seemed to bother them. He’d known before he even arrived that he’d be in good hands. The youngest of seven and the only girl, Henrietta had been so named because after six boys, her parents were not optimistic and wanted a name that was flexible. The family always called her Henry, part nickname and part ironic joke. As a child she’d been doted on by her older brothers, and as an adult she was easygoing and optimistic, incapable of criticizing others or herself. The house was a mess and neither Henry nor her husband seemed to care—roaches crawled on the baseboards, dirty dishes sat in the sink, and mold covered the shower curtain. Every chair was piled with newspapers. “Do anything you like here,” she’d said a few minutes after he arrived, “so long as you don’t get arrested.”
“He won’t have time to get arrested,” Danny had said, taking his duffel. “He’ll be too busy.”
They’d been married for only two years, were not much older than Robert, and right from the start he envied them. So this was love. Their eyes followed each other hungrily, covetously, even around the apartment. They sat close at the dinner table, even though during his first dinner with them, he had to stop eating to mop the perspiration from his face with a napkin, or else it would mix with the food. On their days off, Henry informed him, they went across the street to the movies. “Air-Conditioning,” she whispered, as if incanting the name of God. Duel at Diablo with James Garner and Sidney Poitier was playing at the Waverly, and that summer Robert would see it at least twenty times; some nights, after work, even the loud, bloody battle scenes could not keep him from falling asleep in the back row.
That first night, he slept on the pullout couch, inhaling the smell of reefer from the park mixed with industrial soap and steam from the Laundromat below. It was too hot to sleep more than a few hours anyway, and he wanted to be the first in the shower, while the couple still slept, so as to be out of their way and ready for work.
By 6:00 a.m., Robert was already shaved and dressed, and he sat in the dark apartment with his young uncle drinking instant coffee. Danny slid something to him across the breakfast table. “Take it,” Danny said. “It’s loaded, and small, but there’s a clip on it. Keep it strapped to your leg, you see the holster? And if anybody scares you, just bend down real casual-like and wave it around. That scares them and they stop.”
“You think I’ll get held up?” Robert asked.
“Happens to most people at least once,” Dan said. “It’s like popping your cherry or something. You know, breaks you in.” He smiled. “Don’t be scared, kid. You’ll make fifty dollars a day minimum. Get that hag off your back.”
For his first month, just finding his way around, avoiding traffic, picking out customers who looked like tippers, staying awake at odd hours—all of it kept him so absorbed, his body rigid with adrenaline and fear, that he lost track of time, was done before he realized he’d been in the cab for twelve straight hours. By early July, still no holdups, no flat tires, nothing bad beyond being stiffed occasionally for a tip. He rarely worried about who he picked up anymore, knew instinctively which customers were desirable, when to stick with the avenues, and when to get on the highways. He got casual, and that was his mistake.
There were three of them that night: two young ones, with dirty blond hair, tall and skinny—their clothes hung on them — the third man, black-haired, solidly built. The two young ones got in the back. They wanted Ninety-sixth near Broadway, a tough neighborhood back then, not the famed Upper West Side that it would later become. The bigger man started to get in up front.
“I’d rather you get in back,” Robert said.
“Oh, yeah. Well, they bug me, and I’m here, so drive.” He shut the door.
They were in Midtown traffic on a Saturday night, cars honking. He had the right to ask the man to leave his cab, but it seemed ridiculous to lose a fare over a feeling. He reminded himself not to get paranoid, like the guys who’d been doing this for years. Paranoia, they claimed, saved you: if you had a funny feeling, don’t accept the fare. But he kept driving.
When they got to Ninety-sixth, a brownstone, the two young ones gave him their money. They tipped Robert well, handed him a twenty, and told him to keep it. He accepted the bill, thinking that he’d been right not to make a fuss. There was nothing to be afraid of; they were his age, young guys, going, they informed him, to a high-class whorehouse.
The man in the front seat wanted to go thirty more blocks. Robert had relaxed by then; the big tip from the other two helped. The man was fat, well fed, a white man in a black suit going to Harlem late at night—likely he was a cop, or at worst a bookie—nothing to worry about, Robert thought. At a red light, he noticed that the man was missing the lower half of his ear.
They sat in silence all the way up Broadway. At 122nd Street the subway emerged from underground and showed itself, then crawled toward the Bronx. Undernea
th those aboveground tracks men were gathered in twos and threes, passing a bottle around. He turned right on 126th Street. At the other end was an abandoned lot and then some crumbling apartments near Amsterdam, the man’s destination. The customer pointed to the doorway, and Robert pulled up in front, announcing the fare. When the man went to pull his wallet out of his pocket, he moved forward in an abrupt way as if reaching for something near his feet. Robert, misinterpreting the gesture, panicked and drew his gun.
The minute he did it, he knew he’d made a terrible mistake. The passenger looked at him and grinned. “If I was going to hurt you, I’d have done it blocks ago,” he said. Robert was about to apologize when the man wrenched the gun from his hand, bending Robert’s fingers until he screamed. He held the cold muzzle under Robert’s chin. Robert apologized and begged—he’d been driving for fourteen hours straight. The man jerked the gun slightly and Robert heard a click and the bullet falling into place. “You in the mood, kid, for a wager?” Seconds later, he fired, the bullet piercing the left corner of the cab’s windshield, sending spidery cracks in every direction; Robert was sure he felt it whiz by him, missing his face by inches. The man threw the gun on the dashboard and left without paying. When he was gone, Robert locked the door, made a U-turn, and broke the speed limit all the way down Broadway and then over to Eighth Avenue. In Midtown, he pulled into an alley behind a diner frequented by drivers, rested his arms on the steering wheel, and wept. His knees were shaking so badly that it was hard to operate the pedals. As he drove back to the southern tip of the city, he wondered if he would have to pay for the cracked windshield. How much would it cost? He was too tired just then to worry about it.
He got back to the Village around 3:00 a.m., his legs shaky as he came up from the subway. All he wanted was a shower and that damned uncomfortable couch. His clothes and hair were soaked with sweat, and he stank. Crossing the street, he heard a familiar voice calling his name. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Tracey crossing Sixth Avenue, waving vigorously, pulling a girl behind him, a girl in a short green cocktail dress.
“We went to the Vanguard. Some singer. Can’t remember her name. God, Vishniak,” Tracey said, weaving suddenly, grasping at the girl’s waist for support and then righting himself, “didn’t know you were in the city. Why didn’t you call? This is Crea, by the way. Crea’s still in high school, you know, so watch your language —”
Under the soft glare of a streetlight, Robert and the girl nodded at each other. She had pale skin and long, reddish blond hair.
“We were taking in the local color, right, honey? She called it… what was it?”
“A freak show,” Crea said, laughing.
“We’re gonna get one more drink at a place she likes,” Tracey said. “Come on, Vishniak, one drink? You look like you could use it. I speak the truth—you look like hell.”
“Three’s a crowd. Gotta go,” Robert mumbled, walking quickly down West Fourth. Then, aware of his rudeness, he paused, yelling over his shoulder: “I’ll call you tomorrow!”
Tracey was too drunk to realize that Robert had no phone number for him; the Traces were not listed, and Tracey, more inebriated than usual, would retain no memory of the evening. Only Robert and the girl with the strange name would remember the encounter.
WHEN HE CAME HOME before Labor Day for a visit, he found himself even more distant from his parents than he’d been in the winter. He did not kiss either of them when he arrived, though even Stacia expected such formalities after months of separation. Over the next few days, he uttered only criticisms. “How much money can you save from those ridiculous coupons?” he asked his mother that Sunday, as she sat in the dining room with her scissors and newspaper, increasing her files. “If you add it up by the hour, you’re wasting your goddamned time.”
When she told him, as she had before, to watch his language, he replied that he was a real wage earner now, could talk however he pleased. His father had always been colorful with his language. Barry had cursed like a longshoreman since kindergarten. Why was Robert so special? All week, he and Barry went to the basement to get high. Where had his brother gotten all this grass? Barry would not tell him. Marijuana made Barry funnier, more relaxed, but Robert became even more sullen. The walls in the house were thin, and one night, lying awake in his room, he heard his parents talking.
“It’s what we wanted, right?” Vishniak asked. “That he’d be too educated to speak to us.”
“I didn’t raise him to be stuck up,” Stacia replied. “He’s always been difficult. They’re both spoiled.”
“Jesus, Stacia, let me get some sleep!” Robert yelled. “Your insights are riveting, really, but these walls are for shit!”
Where did the rage come from? That summer, when he should have been growing into a man, Robert felt an adolescent level of anger that he couldn’t shake. When he saw his father coming in late from the night shift, exhausted, he couldn’t ignore Vishniak as he did as a kid, couldn’t put his head in his breakfast and read the paper. He knew something of what happened to his father now, understood some of the brutality of work, and what men had to endure. How could his father make such sacrifices, years of them, for his family?
He left after Labor Day with only a backpack. He would hitch to New York, meeting up with a guy in his dorm who was driving up to school. His parents were now the ones who looked relieved to see him go. His father shoved a ten into his hand and told him to keep his grades up, but his mother folded her arms over her chest. In a sudden moment of regret, he put his arms out, about to hug her, but she placed her hand on his chest and held him at arm’s length. “Get some manners next time,” she whispered, “or don’t come home at all.” Then she smiled, a hard, distant smile, letting him know that she had won again—he had not shaken her one bit.
CHAPTER NINE
The world comes crashing in
In the fall of 1966, sophomore year, Robert came to understand dread. He had started Organic Chemistry. He spent his hours trying to redo ruined recrystallizations and puzzle through nonsensical NMRs. He was taking Calculus as well, walking with his head down, rehearsing formulas in his head. He wrote home that perhaps Vishniak was right; it was too much work to become a doctor.
In the second semester, he took an elective—Life Drawing, a popular course that had been excoriated in the local paper because it used live models. His teacher said he had some talent, but as Barry put it to Robert in a letter: “You’re not exactly the starving-artist type.” Robert knew he was right—memories of his summer still lingered, even as he knew that this coming summer would be no different. But a life of such summers? Just so he could have the freedom to draw and paint in his off hours? Not for him. By the end of the semester he began to doubt that he’d have enjoyed the drawing studio half so much if he hadn’t had the miseries of the lab to compare it to. How on earth was he supposed to choose, at nineteen, what he wanted to do for the next forty years? How was it even possible?
If he couldn’t choose, if he didn’t have a career lined up requiring a graduate degree, then what would happen to him? In his first two years, he tried not to think too much about the war, told himself that maybe it would be over before he graduated. Tufts, tucked away on a bosky suburban campus, was known more for its premeds and Hawaiian-luau-themed fraternity parties than for its radicals. As a freshman, he had noted only the occasional, predictable outburst—a small group of students picketing over a popular philosophy professor not getting tenure; an editorial in the paper about dorm food—but by 1967, the end of his sophomore year, the atmosphere on campus was starting to change, if only in small ways. Students for a Democratic Society increased its membership; more school events featured antiwar speakers. In the fall of his junior year, on his way to class, Robert passed ten or so black students and a few whites outside Ballou Hall. A guy in a leather jacket and a wool cap was up on a chair yelling into a megaphone. “We have lived in Uncle Tom’s Cabin for too long!” the deep voice intoned; the small audience appl
auded and cheered. Robert went closer, and the man took down the megaphone, moved back his cap, and nodded at him. It was Cyril Dawkins.
Tracey, too, was going through a transformation, though it was more aesthetic than political. He had shown up for their junior year with his hair longer, wearing the kind of flannel work shirt that Vishniak used under his uniform on cold days. This was the new style among those who kept up with style, and Tracey would not be left behind. He still drove his coveted green MG around campus, but as if to make up for it, he added a series of antiwar bumper stickers. Robert found this strange, considering what Pascal had told him about the military-industrial complex. But Tracey confided in Robert that he found his family history embarrassing now, and could Robert not mention to anyone that a company with his family name on it made warships?
Just after Thanksgiving break, Robert came home from the library and found Tracey stretched out on the bed in his usual position, smoking pot. This was not surprising; grass was everywhere these days, and harder stuff not so difficult to locate, and so slowly Tracey had begun to intersperse booze with drugs or occasionally mix the two. But there was a young man lying on the floor next to him, someone Robert had never seen before. He was blond and thin with narrow blue eyes. He wore a pair of beat-up blue jeans and a striped T-shirt, and he lay on the rug caressing a guitar but not playing it. They were listening to an album and Tracey told Robert to come in and shut the door. He didn’t introduce the boy—who was certainly more a boy than a man, didn’t look to Robert to be more than sixteen —and when Robert started to say something, Tracey placed a finger over his lips and pointed to a chair. Robert went instead to lie down on his own bed. The music was strange and wonderful—a strong electric guitar behind a woman’s voice that was sad and pleading, needy and angry all at once. He asked who the singer was.
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