Before My Life Began

by Jay Neugeboren

  “Do you miss having Susan around?”

  “No.”

  “You manage very well.” Nicky turns. “For a father you make a pretty damned good mother. How are Jennifer and Benjamin? Do you hear from them? Do they hear from you? Is Paul still alive and kicking?”

  “Susan writes to them occasionally. The last time was from San Francisco. She was living with a man ten years younger than herself—an actor she met in a repertory company she’s part of.”

  “And—?”

  “And what?”

  “And what do you feel about her, you big dope—what do you feel about all that being gone, about Jennifer and Benjamin being away, about the boys growing up without a mother?”

  “Do you mean, do I wish I had you here instead of Susan?”

  Nicky hesitates, a cracked brown eggshell cupped in the fingers of her right hand. Her look darkens—changes from one of delight to one of concern, and it is as if, in the instant between the time Aaron has asked the question and she has thought of answering it, she changes from the young girl he once knew to the woman she actually is. He calculates: they met more than eight years ago. She has been married to Mark for six years. Samuel is almost four.

  “No,” she says, and she turns back to the stove, drops the eggshell into the sink. “Not at all.”

  “You’re happy with Mark?”

  “Very.”

  She cracks more eggs, swirls them with a whisk, leans to the left and lifts toast from the toaster oven.

  “Would you butter these, please? Timing. Everything’s timing—getting everything there and warm at the same moment.”

  Aaron goes to the counter, butters the toast. He opens the refrigerator, takes out a jar of blackberry jam.

  “I made this with the boys, in August.”

  “Paul?”

  “He sends them a postcard every six months or so. He’s living in the south of France, supported, as near as I can make out, by his father’s money and—if we can believe the stories he told Ben—by the C.I.A. Who knows? Jennifer says that he claims to be living with a woman who’s some kind of princess, utterly gorgeous and about two years older than Jen is.”

  “Still courting Susan then.”

  “Susan?”

  “Women the same age Susan was when he met her. Like Debbie.” Nicky passes him, moving to the kitchen table, a frypan in one hand, a spatula in the other, and as she passes she jabs him with an elbow. “Sensitive women of that age are often irresistibly drawn to attractive older men, or haven’t you noticed?”

  “I noticed,” he says, and he smiles, realizing that sometimes Nicky’s voice reminds him, not of Susan’s, as he used to think, but of another. How strange, he thinks. How obvious.

  Fun by the ocean with Davey Voloshin…

  “I saw Louise the other day,” Nicky offers. “Shopping in Louie’s. She had the child—hers and Lucius’s—in an umbrella stroller. She’s pregnant again. Did you know that? Did you know that she remarried—?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you ever hear from Lucius? Do you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “Should I shut up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you were thinking about him before, when I mentioned Susan’s name, weren’t you? I could tell from your eyes, from—”

  “Enough. Okay?”

  “Sorry. After all this time, I didn’t think what happened could still get to you.”

  “It doesn’t, usually. It’s just that with the news about Jackie and—”

  “Shh,” Nicky says. She bends over, kisses Aaron on the forehead, and when he feels her warm lips on his skin, he finds that he is forcing himself to see the scene again, in Susan’s house—so that he will be able to make it go away? so that he will feel even more depressed than he already is?—when, three months after the first time he found her there with Lucius, he discovered them again, but not in the kitchen. Why didn’t he kill them? Why, when he saw them—Susan’s hair across Lucius’s cheek like a soft gold curtain—did he feel as if he had already witnessed the scene before? Did they want him to discover them? Were they so weary of their secret and their guilt? Did they merely, in some strangely kind and deliberate way, want to give him enough time to make sense of the knowledge that he had taken in, if dimly, the first time he found them together?

  “I don’t mind living alone,” Aaron says. “I was scared at first—the first month or two. Did I ever tell you?”

  “You wrote. But tell me again.”

  “I was scared that without Susan I’d be incomplete somehow, that without her on the other side of the kids—for balance, as it were—there wouldn’t be any family. But there is. Me and the boys—that’s family enough. And Ben and Jen, when they come home.”

  “Does Ben like it at M.I.T.?”

  “He loves it.”

  “No regrets?”

  “Regrets?”

  “About turning down all those athletic scholarships and becoming the great college athlete his father could have been and never was?”

  “No.”

  “Following in his father’s footsteps, is that it? Renunciation as a way of life.”

  “I hope not.” Aaron laughs, stares hard at her eyes. “Though there are some pleasures in renunciation.”

  “You bet. But listen. I remember you once told me that being an only child, and then an orphan, used to make you feel that you were incomplete somehow, as if your parents hadn’t finished making you.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Don’t play naive. You said it and you know it. Did you feel that more when you were younger, or after you were put in the orphanage?” Nicky scoops eggs out of the frypan, sets the buttered toast, cut on the diagonal, onto the edges of their plates. She sits. “And speaking of renunciation, are you seeing anyone these days?”

  “Now and then.” He shrugs. “It doesn’t seem important.”

  “What does?”

  “The children. My work. My friends. You.”

  “Think you’ll ever marry again, given this new and enthusiastic attitude toward women?”

  “I don’t know. Once the first year passed and I saw we’d be fine—me and Larry and Carl—I haven’t thought about it much. If it happens, it happens.”

  “I heard you before. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure.”

  She reaches across, takes his hand in her own, rubs the stubs of his missing fingers.

  “I love you very much, Aaron, but not in that way. I’m not the girl I once was. You’re not the man you once were. Can I say it all now? Oh sure. I suppose I could let myself fall in love with you that way again—what grown-ups can’t, if they decide to let themselves?—but what for now? Think of the mess it would make. And think of this too—what I feel most of all—of how we can get so much more out of friendship.”

  Aaron smiles, but not easily. “Sure,” he says. “I suppose.”

  “I suppose.” Nicky stretches, one hand moving past her hip, towards the small of her back. “Oh Aaron, you are such a wonderful man. Jesus!” Her hand moves forward, hesitates, drops. She takes up her fork, begins eating her eggs, motions to him to do the same. “I mean, I can see the whole thing, right? I leave Mark and he goes to California and meets Susan and then we spend the rest of our lives shuttling the kids from one coast to the other—Paul and Susan’s, Mark’s and mine, yours and Susan’s, Mark’s and Susan’s, yours and mine, Paul and Debbie’s, Paul and his princess’s—how many families worth by now?—and if we can’t figure out whose turn it is, we send them off to France. So do you know what I really think? I think it would be a goddamned shame if even a small part of you stayed so wounded that you didn’t let some good and lucky woman into your life again. There are a few of us around, you know. Scared?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Scared,” Nicky asserts. “But listen. Would you want more children? Would you be willing to have a second family?”

&nbs
p; “A second? I don’t understand. I already—”

  “Besides the one you have now, I mean.”

  “Yes.” Nicky does not seem to notice his confusion. “Sure.”

  “I mean, think of the waste, Aaron. A man like you and all those good women out there wondering why you’re not in their lives. You could imagine having a new family?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’ll happen then. Okay. Tell me this—are you happy these days, all things considered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still a man of many words. What was it you said they called you at the Home—the silent one? Like Lou Gehrig, right?” She goes to the gas range, brings more coffee. “The difference always amazes me, though. Still. How silent you can be—not withdrawn, really, but just silent in a warm way, especially when you’re around the people you love—and then the way you can suddenly talk like no one else I know, the way—” She stops, licks a scrap of egg from between her upper teeth. “So tell me—why am I here and why did you call this meeting?”

  “Because I decided that I want to go down to the city to Jackie’s funeral, and I wondered if you’d be able to stay here with the boys for a day or two.”

  “Why don’t you take them with you?”

  “To a funeral?”

  “Sure. You can tell them more about Jackie.”

  “I think I’ll be too upset, and—”

  “Why shouldn’t you be upset? Let them see your heart, dear one. Let them know you care.”

  “Or I thought that maybe you could have them stay with you and Mark. I’d really like to go, Nicky, and—”

  “Did you hear what I said before? Goddamn. Should I shout it? Why-don’t-you-take-your-sons-with-you? It would be good for them to see where you grew up. That’s what I think. It would be good for them to know that part of you, to see where your passion and strength of character come from. From whence you came, right? It would be good for them to gather in some clues they could use in beginning to figure their father out, in beginning to understand why he cares about things the way he does. You’re not eating your breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  She touches his hand again.

  “It’s only a suggestion, so don’t be offended and defensive. We can still say anything at all to one another, can’t we? Can’t we, Aaron? Have we ever held back, in all the years since we met?”

  “No.”

  “Okay then. It’s only a suggestion, but take my word for it, it’s a goddamned good one.”

  About fifteen miles south of Hartford, Larry, resting in the back seat, wakes up. He leans forward, puts his hand on Aaron’s neck, lightly.

  “How long did I sleep?”

  “An hour.”

  Carl is next to Aaron, his head against a pillow, the pillow wedged between the car’s seat and the door. Carl’s feet—he is fifteen, almost six feet tall, with long legs—almost reach Aaron’s thigh. The sun is beginning to rise in the east, lavender streaks spreading gently above low, rolling hills.

  “I bet there’ll be lots of famous athletes there today.”

  “The funeral’s tomorrow.”

  “Then why did we leave so early today?”

  “To see Jackie. His body will be in Harlem for viewing at a funeral chapel there, and that way we can walk by the coffin. In the church tomorrow, we wouldn’t get a chance.”

  “To see him?”

  “To say goodbye.”

  “How dangerous will Harlem be? I mean, for white people.”

  “Not very.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you questions?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Did you see Jackie play a lot when you were a boy?”

  “Sure.” Aaron smiles. “My friends and I used to have a way of sneaking into Ebbets Field once it got past the second inning.”

  “Was it because you were all orphans—I mean, that they felt sorry for you and let you in?”

  “No. After school we’d ride the Flatbush Avenue trolley down to Empire Boulevard. My friend Tony had a cousin who worked one of the turnstiles. There’d be eight or ten of us and we’d chip in, give him two or three bucks and he’d let us all in.”

  “Sounds great. Sometimes I wish I’d grown up in a big city, the way you did—”

  “The big stars will be there. You can look in the newspaper—I left it on the seat next to you—where it tells the names of the pallbearers.”

  “Bill Russell will be one, won’t he?”

  “Yes. Russell will be there. Do you know what he said? He said that even though he never saw Jackie play, he’d go halfway around the world to honor him because he was a man—because of what he did for all black athletes.”

  “Will Muhammad Ali be there, do you think?”

  “Probably. Jackie’s old teammates, though—those are the ones I’m hoping to see. Don Newcombe and Jim Gilliam and Ralph Branca and Pee Wee Reese and Joe Black and Carl Erskine. They were my heroes when I was your age, the way Carlton Fisk and Carl Yastrzemski are yours now.”

  Larry leans closer. “Was Pee Wee Reese the one you told me about, in the story about how they made the crowd get quiet after they were calling Jackie a nigger?”

  “Yes. Pee Wee was from Kentucky, and when he—”

  “I remember the story, how I thought Pee Wee got his name from being small, and how you told me about him getting it from shooting marbles—from being a marbles champion in Louisville when he was a kid. But, Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “When I was younger—I was afraid to ask—but why did the kids in school used to say that Jews had horns?”

  “Horns?”

  “Some of the Polish kids used to say we had horns and that they must of cut them off when we were born, when we were circumcised.”

  Aaron talks for a while about anti-Semitism, and about what he himself has only recently learned—about how Michelangelo confused the Hebrew word for beams of light with the word for horns. In the rear view mirror he sees that Larry has stopped listening, is looking out the window.

  “Then too,” Aaron says, “there are some people who just hate Jews because they like to hate people. The way people hate blacks.”

  “Well, fuck them,” Larry says.

  Aaron smiles.

  “But what made Jackie so special? Really. There are lots of great black ball players. Why was he the best, the way you always say he was?”

  “I don’t know. One of the sportswriters pointed out that even though he never hit more than nineteen home runs in a single season on a team that had great home run hitters like Gil Hodges and Duke Snider and Roy Campanella, they always let Jackie bat clean-up. Does that answer your question?”

  “I suppose. Will Campanella be there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Carl once did a book report about him. I forget the title.”

  “It’s Good to Be Alive,” Aaron says. “He’ll be an honorary pallbearer. Fat and chubby and always stood with his foot in-the-bucket. He and Jackie never really got along—Jackie thought he was too much of an Uncle Tom—but he was the greatest catcher I ever saw. After the car accident, when he was paralyzed and forced to live in a wheelchair, his wife divorced him.”

  “Will seeing Jackie dead upset you a lot?”

  “It might.”

  “Yeah. Nicky told us. She said it would be good for you to get it out of your system. Only—?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does it bother you, that you never really had the chance to be a college or pro ballplayer?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not in baseball maybe, but in basketball, let’s say.” Larry hesitates for a split-second, then continues: “Lucius used to say you were as good as any of the pros, that if you’d gone to college and played pro you could’ve been like some of the great white players, like Jerry West or Bill Bradley or Bob Cousy or Dave DeBusschere.”

  “Not true,” Aaron says, and he hears the note of irritation in his voice.

  Carl stir
s but does not wake.

  What Aaron wants to do, he knows, is simply—yet again—to tell the story of Jackie’s life to his son. He smiles. Would his father, or his father’s brothers, be pleased with him? At Passover, when the children ask the reasons for certain rituals—eating unleavened bread and bitter herbs, dipping greens in salt water, reclining at the table—the father answers by telling the story of the going forth from Egypt. Because we were slaves to the Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord our God brought us forth with a strong arm and an outstretched hand….

  “Listen,” Aaron says. “When Carl wakes up we’ll talk some more, okay? You rest now. It’s going to be a long day. We might have to wait in line a while before we can go in to see him.”

  “He was a lot like you, wasn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “Jackie Robinson. I mean, like when you’re determined to do something—like going back to school at your age and becoming an artist—nothing ever stands in your way, does it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I suppose.” Larry laughs. “You always say that, don’t you?”

  “I suppose.”

  They both laugh.

  “And anyway, what I figured out a long time ago—it disappointed me—was that you were too old to be a famous athlete anymore. Players as old as you are usually retired already. So maybe you’ll be a famous artist instead, right? A lot of famous artists are pretty old—”

  “Not as old as me.”

  Larry laughs again, ruffles his father’s hair, then sits back, closes his eyes. Aaron drives on, past Middletown, past New Haven, his boys sleeping in the car. The funeral parlor is at Seventh Avenue and 135th Street, and Aaron doubts that any of the famous players and dignitaries and movie stars will be there, in Harlem. Today will be more of a family day, he hopes. He begins to think of which highways to take, of how he will route himself into the city, of what else he might do with the boys while they are there together.

  He has promised to take them to his old neighborhood, to show them where the orphanage and Ebbets Field were. They want to see Radio City Music Hall, the Empire State Building, the Museum of Natural History. Aaron imagines seeing Jackie’s wife Rachel and her children, David and Sharon, at the church. He imagines seeing Jackie’s two brothers, Mack and Edgar. He knows that everyone will be there: Governor Rockefeller and Joe Louis, Mayor Lindsay and Willie Mays. Movie stars and politicians and civil rights leaders. Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer and Roy Wilkins and Ralph Abernathy. Aaron tries to see Jackie out on the desert—the one he had imagined for Malcolm X and Martin Luther King so long ago—but he does not let his mind dwell on the picture for long.