I told Gladstein my parents were getting divorced, and he beetled his brow and smoothed his goatee. “Is she still mad about the ring?”
“It doesn’t make sense she’s so worried about being good. She doesn’t even believe in God.”
Gladstein winced. He didn’t like that.
“I’ve asked her to lunch a few times,” he said, “and she keeps telling me she’s busy. What does that mean? Busy at lunch? Lunch is when you take a break.”
But it was true that Mom had her hands full. Her son was in jail, and we’d been saddled with a rookie court-appointed attorney who lacked the proper gravitas and needed too much bolstering. He would phone Mom every day to ask if he was doing all right, which hardly gave her confidence. On top of this, she had to arrange her own divorce.
“What caused your mother not to believe in God? Atheism often stems from religious trauma. Were her parents preachers?”
“No, she just thinks the world is a bad place.”
“Well, there is tragedy in the world, one can’t deny it. But there’s magic, Witcher. There’s magic in the world.”
“If you say so.”
“Sure there is.” Gladstein gestured about, inviting me to examine his shop as proof. And you know what? He had no customers. The air was stale. His dogs were whining and scratching at the back door and I could smell their shit. Gladstein on magic just wasn’t convincing anymore. He had promised so much, and yet I never even got to see Myra’s breasts. All that happened was my brother murdered her brother and wound up in jail.
Days passed. Gladstein fretted, pined and worried. He asked about my mother constantly. Finally he decided he would accept her coldness no longer.
He arrived at Witcher House one day in his Continental, hoisting his bulk out one leg at a time. I was in the front room, watching. It was Sunday and Mom was off work.
“Mom, Mr. Gladstein is here,” I called.
“Moses? What does he want?”
“He’s brought flowers.”
His hair was slicked back and he was wearing a jacket with a carnation in the lapel. He had shaved his goatee, making him look denuded and perverse.
He grimly approached the door, bearing his bouquet. Mom appeared just as he was entering.
He thrust the flowers at her.
“A token of apology.”
“Apology for what?’
“For the ring. For interfering.”
“Well, thank you, Moses, this is so nice of you. We’ll let bygones be bygones. Come in the kitchen, let’s have a seat.”
She was touched, I could tell. Not even Mr. Harris at the Ben Franklin had brought her flowers.
We went in the kitchen and sat. Mom stuck the flowers in a glass, placed it on the table. They were gardenias, I believe—I don’t know flowers very well.
“Think of them as a token,” Gladstein said.
He seemed uneasy. Perhaps not being on his stool made him uncomfortable. The kitchen chair was inadequate for his bulk, which kept spilling over the side. Poor Mr. Gladstein was alien to kitchen chairs.
“Sweet domesticity,” he said, gazing around.
Yeah, you haven’t tried her goulash, I thought.
“It’s been so long since—”
“What?”
“You know, I was with Sophie for years, I never knew anybody else.”
“She sounds like such a nice person.”
“She had a lot of compassion for the poor, a highly developed sense of social justice.”
“She sounds like she was a real nice person. I’ve always said that.”
“Which is why I thought…this ring, it’s …”
Mom seemed nervous. She cut her eyes towards the glass and said, “Those are such pretty flowers.”
“Yes, and I want to tell you something, Bledsoe was way off the mark when he said that ring was worth a thousand dollars. He was trying to take advantage of you—that ring’s worth a lot more than a thousand.”
“Really? I don’t know a thing about diamonds. Somehow it looked genuine to me, that’s all. I only took it to Mr. Bledsoe out of curiosity. I never would have sold it.”
“You should be wearing that ring, Margaret. It belongs on your finger.”
Mom’s hand flitted to the gardenias and began to rearrange them.
“That sounds like a proposal.” She laughed.
“Of course, we have to wait for the divorce to be final. How long will that take?”
“Wait, stop. I was only joking.”
Mr. Gladstein stared at me in terror.
Mom’s eyes plunged downwards.
“Jack, why don’t you leave us alone a few minutes,” she said.
I was glad to get out of there. I sat on the porch, blushing for all three of us. I couldn’t believe Gladstein would be so artless. What did he know about women? I knew more. And this was the man who had promised me magic, who had counseled me on Myra.
At that time of year the evening should have been forbidding and cold, but it was balmy instead. The hum of the world was not driving me so crazy anymore. Perhaps the gods had been appeased. Maybe they were enjoying the nice weather too.
I sat waiting for Gladstein to finish his foolishness.
It took longer than I expected, maybe an hour. By then it was dark and finally growing cold. I was just standing to fetch a sweater when I heard the scrape of chairs in the kitchen. (The door was still open, I could hear them through the screen.)
Gladstein stepped out.
“Walk me to the car.”
I went to the Continental with him. He turned the ignition and whirred down the window. The dogs were not in the back seat. I imagined them yapping behind some door in Jefferson Ward.
“She turned me down. She said no.”
“She’s not even divorced yet,” I told him.
Gladstein bit his lip. He stared ahead, nodding at his thoughts. “Back in the old days matchmakers used to take care of things like this.”
“Maybe you should try again in a year.”
“That’s what your mother told me.”
“She did?”
I was stunned. I had offered that only as a false hope.
“I’m not out of the game yet, no sirree.”
“She said she might marry you in a year? Does that mean we’ll have to move to Jefferson Ward?”
He wasn’t paying attention. He was already arranging the rabbi, the huppah, the date.
I liked Gladstein, but I couldn’t picture him as a father. I was Pop’s son, even if I never saw the man again. I was a Witcher. This is where I lived. In Witcher House.
“Boy, let me tell you, I’m glad that’s over with.”
“How come you like her so much, Mr. Gladstein?”
“Class, Witcher. She has good qualities. I’ve always thought she was too good for your father…but maybe I shouldn’t say that.”
“You should go home,” I said, “take care of your dogs.”
“A woman like her craves affection, someone who will appreciate her, give her attention. Women like attention, Witcher. She needs magic, she has no magic in her life. People need magic, and I could give her that, I really believe I could.”
He shot me an anxious look. “How would you feel if your mom and I got married?”
“I’m not sure I’d want to live in Jefferson Ward.”
“What’s wrong with Jefferson Ward?”
“We’re white, have you noticed? We’ve got white skin.”
Gladstein swiveled his baggy eyes away from me.
“What a world,” he said, “what a sad world. No compassion, no feelings for others.”
He wiggled his fat fingers in farewell. And drove off.
44
IT TOOK THE JURY sixty minutes to return with a verdict. I imagine they went to the jury room and passed around potato chips and chatted about TV programs they had seen.
The evidence that convicted my brother was largely circumstantial, but there was plenty of physical proof, like hair a
nd fibers from Anya’s car and traces of blood swabbed from the seats of the GTO and from the cloth shower curtain in our bathroom. Anya, incidentally, no longer was in love with my brother. By the time the trial began she had taken up with a pharmaceuticals salesman ten years her senior. It so happened she had reappeared on Clark Lane the very day the news broke that Gaylord’s body had been found. She’d last seen Stan in San Francisco, which is where she ditched him after she caught him practicing free love in a Haight-Ashbury crash pad with a hippie chick who, apparently, gave him a dose of clap. He and Anya had argued about it, and he had punched her, and she had come to the conclusion that he was a loon.
People I never dreamed of were called to the witness stand. A gas station attendant. A late-night hamburger clerk. A farmer whose shovel got stolen from his porch the night of the murder. Bruce Pendleton, whom Gaylord was supposed to meet at the movies and never did.
A local guy, some dope who’d been ambling purposelessly along the side of the road that fateful evening, reported seeing Gaylord in the passenger seat of the GTO right before he disappeared. That was a pretty big deal, and our defense attorney was too inept to trip the guy up. Reedy testified about the threats Stan had made in his presence. Anya and my mother bore witness about Stan’s real whereabouts, and I was called to tell the court about the early-morning hours when my brother returned home and ran the water in the bathroom. While I was being questioned Stan, at the defense table, doodled on a pad.
His alibi was easily destroyed. Not even his haircut helped him. He had trash written all over him.
They sent him to the state pen. I went to visit him once with Mom. I was around fifteen. The guards shook me down. I was led through a courtyard surrounded by barred windows, and from the windows the bellowing of hundreds of inmates echoed off the walls.
We sat across a table from each other. Stan was in a prison shirt and pants. His hair had been buzzed and his complexion was bad. He had pimples. His skin was pale.
He didn’t have much to say. He had always blamed me for his imprisonment. He blamed Mom too, but he needed her care packages so he didn’t come down on her so hard.
“I hear the Joyners left the neighborhood,” he told me.
I nodded slowly, hating him.
He saw that I hated him and he changed the subject.
That was the only time I saw him after he got put in prison.
I HAD a pretty hard time forgetting Myra, not least because my last name was repeatedly linked with hers in the papers. Gaylord Joyner and Stanley Witcher would remain in perpetual association. And I was having nightmares about Gaylord, dreams I don’t wish to tell.
One day, even though everything that could be said had already been said, I wrote her a letter.
Dear Myra,
I am sorry I didn’t come to your brother’s funeral, but I felt it would be too hard on you and your family. I am sorry for what you are going through. If there is ever anything I can do for you let me know.
Your friend,
Jack
I used the postal system, and five days later a letter came back.
Dear Jack,
Thank you for your letter. It was good you didn’t come to the funeral. I don’t blame you for what happened, but I will always hate your brother. I hope your life is better than his.
Yours truly,
Myra
I would daydream about her, invent scenes where we laughed, talked, hugged. I’d course her name during class across my notepaper. I inscribed “MJ” on the edges of all of my books. I fantasized that there would be a day when she’d come bobbing along and say, “It’s no use, I tried to get over you but all the other boys are dummies. You’re the only guy as smart as I am.”
Roaming the halls of the school where I’d been banished, sitting on the stool behind Gladstein’s counter, lying in my brotherless room—at so many moments my thoughts would wander to Myra. Where is she? Who does she talk to? What does she think about? Everything was about her: the Pudding woods, the shopping center, the sewing store near Gladstein’s. Rusty, of course, was a faithful reminder, since Myra and I had been his best human friends. I would bend to pet him and say, “Hey, Rusty, how are things next door to the Joyner house?”
I saw her during our senior year of high school. This was at a party thrown by a kid whose parents were out of town. As soon as her eyes lighted on me she spread out her hands and beamed in surprise, as if we went way back and had wonderful memories. She crossed the room, hesitated, and gave me a warm hug.
“Look at you,” she said, “I hear you’re going to Harvard.”
She’d grown up over the past five years. I had recognized her only by her pogo-stick walk, a residue of adolescent gawkiness. Otherwise she looked like a girl you could see anywhere, pretty and self-assured. But a pretty, self-assured Myra would never be any girl. Not to me. Not even now.
“Can you believe it?” I said.
“That doesn’t surprise me, I always said you were smart.”
“What about you?” I nearly asked if she was going to Duke, but I didn’t want to bring Gaylord to mind.
“I’m sticking around,” she said.
She was going to a local college, she didn’t want to leave her father alone because her mother had just died and he was having a hard time adjusting to that.
I told her I was sorry to hear it.
“I’m sorry about everything,” I said, “especially about everything that happened back then.”
“It wasn’t you Jack, everyone knows that.”
She gazed at me kindly, but in her eyes lurked something awful: fear, anxiety.
“I can’t help it,” I told her, “I’ve always felt so bad about what happened.”
She looked away and I wondered if I should stop.
My girlfriend hadn’t been able to come to the party that night, and all I wanted now was to go off with Myra and talk about the ring I once gave her and the kidney-shaped pool at Anya’s house and the kisses we once exchanged.
She smiled and said, “Okay bye, I just wanted to come over and congratulate you on getting into Harvard.”
“Do you ever see anyone from the old neighborhood?” I asked.
She patted my arm and went away.
After a while I saw her leaving the party with an older guy who played guitar in a band called Black Death. Later I found out she was dating him.
I left the party after that. The only reason I’d stayed was for her. I had been hoping she would leave with me.
WHEN MOM AND GLADSTEIN got married he sold the house in Jefferson Ward and bought a split-level off Baskin Road. That’s where I spent the remainder of my adolescence, up to the time I won my scholarship.
A line of trees behind the house functioned as my woods. I would go there whenever I wanted to be alone.
When I was sixteen I actually made a few friends. My girlfriend was named Deborah and she lived one road over: a nice Jewish girl with a wide smile and an exotic nose. For years after we broke up she wrote me sad, introspective letters. Later she married a dentist. Before her wedding she told me I was the only one she had ever truly loved.
On the day I left for college Mom and Gladstein were busy packing the car to drive me to Boston.
I left to say good-bye to Deborah. She was crying, and I was sad. We knew it was over, even though we kept protesting that it wasn’t.
She had been accepted into the same school Stan would have gone to had he not been enrolled in the state pen. In fact, it was the school Myra wound up attending.
After we said good-bye I strolled thoughtfully back to the house, wondering why I never felt things the way I should.
Pop was waiting for me. He had come to say farewell. I think it was the first I’d seen of him since Christmas, when he had come by to drop off my gift—a gilt-edged copy of The Last of the Mohicans, the only book, I believe, he had ever finished.
“Harvard boy, good golly. Must be your mother’s genes’cause it sure ain’t mine.”
/> “Must be,” I said.
“You gonna write?”
“Would you write back?”
I hadn’t seen much of him over the years. It wasn’t until Mom phoned to tell him I’d been accepted to Harvard that he got excited about me again. He had remarried and redivorced. He was working as a mechanic in a garage in Southside.
“Come on, let’s walk to the woods,” he said.
Our house was on a cul-de-sac, and there was a patch of trees at the end that separated our subdivision from the next. That’s what he meant by “the woods.”
Pop was wearing glasses and he was fat. He steered me away from Mom and Gladstein, who were loading up the new Lincoln with my belongings. Mom hollered at me not to take too long.
“This is quite an accomplishment for a Witcher,” Pop said. “I don’t think any Witcher has ever gone so far. If your brother had gone to college he would have been the first Witcher to do so.”
“But being a Witcher, he didn’t.”
“Don’t be bitter,” he said. “You got your whole life ahead of you. It’s gonna be a heck of a lot easier than mine was.”
“What’s so bad about your life? You’ve always had plenty to eat, a roof over your head.”
“Man does not live by bread alone.”
We came to the cul-de-sac.
Pop was fidgeting with his fingers. He had something he wanted to say, but now that the time had come he didn’t know how. He gave me a pleading look, as if he thought I might help him.
“I think they’re ready to go,” I said.
We returned to the car, and the whole time he kept darting looks at me.
I thought, Who is this fat man with glasses?
We drove off and he stood watching. I gave him a glance as we drove by and then I looked away. I was hoping we’d get out of there fast, but Mr. Gladstein, or Moses as I called him now, saw a ball bouncing across the road and carefully braked the car. It was irritating, because the ball was plainly off the road and the kid it belonged to was waiting for us to pass.
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