And now, here he was again. To be this close to him exceeded my hopes for what the night would bring—though anything less would have sent me into a fit of depression. He stopped in his tracks to look me over. His face was half-lit by the luminous echoes of lights that were elsewhere—fights from the stage that bounced off the ground and settled into the crowns of the trees, lights from the windows of his trailer, lights from the VIP tent.
“Hi, kid,” he said, his voice pounded and shredded and raw from the concert. “How’d I do?”
“Fine,” I managed to say. I’d had no idea I was going to get this close to him, and had prepared no words, no attitude. He looked bad—terrible, in fact. His skin was gray, the skin beneath his eyes grayer still. He looked like, and probably was, a junkie. But with Luke, you never knew; he had access to limitless drugs and an equal number of cures—he burned through disease and health like he burned through love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, belief and contempt, and everything, everything, everything else.
“This is the loneliest time,” he said. “Right now. After.”
We walked together, toward the tent.
“Been in there yet?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, and then waited for the next question.
But there was no next question. We walked into the VIP party. Without anyone actually moving, you could feel the balance and weight of the room shift, as the crowd ached with wanting to gather around him, and tried to respect that piece of high-priced real estate called His Personal Space. I wondered if Luke had any idea who I was. Did he see for that moment I was his son? Or at least did he recognize me as Esther’s boy? Or was I simply one of those ten thousand souls whom he faintly recognized? Was I just someone who happened to be standing there beneath the Cape Cod constellations when he came out of his trailer?
Luke was no longer at my side. I stood there for what seemed a very long time. I didn’t even get a beer. I just watched Luke from afar and I tried to maintain a relaxed demeanor, in case he might glance in my direction and consider coming back to collect me. But Luke was never one for glancing in anyone’s direction, unless you were a young woman and he wanted to fuck you, and sometimes not even then. I could feel my time running out. And I noted the following curious emotion: I felt strangely more like his son now that he was adrift in the room, accepting a Heineken from Danny, and putting his other hand over his face while a black-haired, knobby-kneed child in Ted Kennedy’s care tried to take a picture of Luke with her brightly flashing Instamatic. Standing alone, I was back in familiar territory.
At least a half-hour had passed, and I knew Luke would not stay in this tent or with these people for many more minutes. He would leave in a mysterious rush; he would take a step backward and disappear. What were the chances of his coming back for me before he left? I stayed put, with the sweaty palms and queasy belly of an unsuccessful suitor.
Until I could bear it no longer. It was clear he was not about to resume his conversation with me, a conversation that had, after all, consisted of just a handful of words, none of them having anything to do with acknowledging who I really was, or even remembering my name. A fire of humiliation burned within me, filling my head with smoke, blinding and choking me. This was something I would never get used to, though, in a sense, my entire life had been spent in modes of banishment: calling numbers that had been disconnected, waiting for limos that had already left the underground garage, sending letters to beachfront “cottages” that were already shuttered and locked, put on hold by assistants and left out there in the fiberoptic ether until the rage made me slam the phone down, and then pick it up again to slam it down harder.
At last, I turned away from Luke, momentarily forgot how to get out of the tent, and then walked quickly through the flap, away from the slightly noxious smell of the huge gas heaters that burned at the tent’s periphery, and out into the cool Atlantic night.
I walked away from the white light and diamond-hard laughter of the VIP tent, past the security guards who smoked and talked around Luke’s trailer, past the stage filled with roadies wrapping up long coils of electric cables and carrying away keyboards and drums, and made my half-dazed way into the passless multitude.
Tents were scattered over the dewy, star-struck field; Coleman stoves and kerosene lamps glowed behind the raised flaps. All that was missing was the muttering of horses and the soft moans of the wounded, and Mathew Brady setting up his tripod.
There were no more taxis waiting to take people to town, and no room for me in town even if I were to get there. The temperature was falling, and I really wanted to get inside one of those tents. I had a feeling I would have to end up convincing someone I was Luke’s son before I’d be given shelter, but I did try for straight charity a few times before resorting to using Luke’s name—though, in fairness to me, I’m not convinced that simply telling the truth about yourself qualifies as name dropping.
I ended up in a tent with a college student named Amy and we ended up making love. My position as the king’s bastard son had not granted me the license of the king himself, but it did allow me to leave far behind the normal rhythms of romantic life, with its timid approaches and its stunning sexual setbacks. Announcing that I was Luke’s son opened doors, and God knows it spread legs. I don’t want to complain about it, because I enjoyed the sex and I needed the company. But there was a price, and the price was an after-burn of anger—at Luke, at myself, and at the women who fucked me for all the wrong reasons. I sometimes longed for a woman to love me who knew nothing of Luke, but where was I going to find this creature? The Japanese exchange student with the cashmere sweater and the tiny crucifix resting in the fragile hollow of her long neck? Forget it; Luke was bigger in Kyoto than he was in Cleveland—bootlegs of his early stuff sold there for more than the stereo that played it. Then how about that exchange student from Sierra Leone? Well, Luke had played Freetown, she’d been there, the police had come because the president’s wife had had her purse snatched. Every now and then, I did meet someone who had never heard of Dad, or who had, but only vaguely, and to whom Dad meant absolutely nothing; but, unfortunately, this gap was just part of a yawning mouthful of cultural cavities—she would have never seen The Mary Tyler Moore Show, never heard of Andy Warhol, had no idea who Hank Aaron was, didn’t care who killed the Kennedys.
Next morning, I was up with the sun. I made my way through the field, which now, in the silver foggy mystical light of daybreak, looked like the aftermath of the battle at Gettysburg, with bodies strewn as far as the eye could see, and fires smoldering everywhere.
There were quite a few people leaving the concert site, and we walked in a mass to the ferry, a hundred of us at least, like marchers in a demonstration, but without placards or chants.
Those ferries are prompt, down to the second. Loaded up with Luke’s fans, some in cars, most of us in the first leg of a journey home that would entail buses, trains, and hitched rides, it plowed through the steely waters. As it was when I arrived, the water was full of smaller craft in which local sailors were still carrying the concertgoers with whom they had cut private deals. I stood on the deck, pretending that the cool air was a shower. The benches were filled with dozing Luke fans. Near the bow, a tall kid in overalls and matted hair played guitar and sang Luke songs while a few adoring girls sat Indian- style on the floor listening to him.
Standing next to me was a boy about eight years old. He wore a plain white T-shirt, khaki pants. He had the slightly cross look of a curious, independent child, the kind of boy who is lonely a lot because other children bore him. If he’d been up half the night, he didn’t seem any the worse for wear. The top rail was exactly as tall as he was, and he leaned against it with his hand raised. Between his thumb and forefinger he held a piece of bread.
Suddenly, a gull—half the size of the kid, with a fierce dab of paint for an eye—swooped down and snatched the bread out of his fingers with its scimitar beak.
I was so startled that I jumped back. The k
id took another piece of bread out of his pocket and held it over the railing. This time at least ten gulls appeared. Their massive wings made minute adjustments as they tried to float next to the boy. All of them trained their left eye on the kid, who stood absolutely still, with the half-inch of bread held out to lure the birds even closer. At last, one of the flock pointed its left wing down toward the foaming wake of the ferry and in a moment’s grace and greed snatched the bread away.
Over and over, the kid performed his feat of self-control. Once, one of the gulls clearly got a bite of finger along with the bread, but all the kid did was to check if he was bleeding. He knew I was watching him; now and then he acknowledged me with a quick sideways glance. He offered me a small piece of bread, but I shook my head. I knew I’d drop it into the ocean as soon as the gulls were close to me, or would try to toss it up in the hope that one of the gulls would grab it midair. He shrugged and finished feeding the birds the last of the bread.
When he was done, he sat on one of the seats on deck, next to his father, a portly, sweet-faced guy about forty, whose sneakered feet rested on a hastily baled-up mess of camping equipment.
“I’m done,” the kid said, showing his father his empty hands.
“Okay,” the father said. “I saw that one gull nail you.”
“It didn’t hurt,” the kid said. He held his hand away from his father.
“You sure?” The father stroked his son’s auburn cap of recently cut hair.
The boy closed his eyes. Fatigue. Pleasure. Safety. He sat straight and still for another moment and then succumbed and rested his head against his father’s meaty shoulder. His father drew him closer, put his arm around him, and kissed the top of his son’s head. The kid was absolutely made.
I turned away and looked at the sky, the sea, the hundreds of sailboats, motor boats, and yachts that were making the crossing with us. I could feel the color rising in my face. I felt my soul welling up inside me like a kind of nausea, the illness of being the self we can neither bear nor escape.
3
NOW, two years later, after a long, difficult night on my mother’s sofa, my wristwatch’s electronic mosquito alarm got me up the next morning at five. The house was still in darkness, save the pale fan of lamplight that swept out of Esther’s bedroom. I looked out of the window; her van was gone. I sank back into the motherly softness and warmth of the sofa, but then forced myself up again. The batteries in my tape recorder were dead. I pressed the Eject button and the little tape popped out. I labeled it, put it in my briefcase. I tried to hurry. Though my substitute teaching job was marginal, I was in no position to lose it.
By the time I got my shoes on, the phone was ringing.
“Is this the home of Esther Rothschild?” a woman’s voice asked. She sounded young and very nervous.
“Yes, it is.” I had no advance degrees in life’s tragedies, but I knew I wasn’t getting this call before daybreak because anything less than mayhem was loose in my life.
“To whom am I speaking, please?”
“This is her son. What’s going on?”
“Ummm. Your mother?”
“Yes?”
“She’s had a car accident. She’s in Leyden Hospital, in the emergency room.”
“Oh my God! My God … Is she all right?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
And so forth. By the time the day had broken, I was already there—I sped down the mountain, past the spot, not a mile away, where the road crew were towing the twisted remains of Mother’s car away from the spot where she’d lost control of it. She was already out of the emergency room and into surgery before I arrived.
Hours passed.
I sat there.
Mother didn’t have her own doctor, didn’t quite subscribe to Western medicine, though I don’t think even she would have chosen herbs and kitchen wisdom and acupuncture for burns, a shattered leg, uncountable lacerations, broken teeth, and crushed ribs. According to the attending physician, a somewhat high concentration of alcohol was found in her blood. The doctor’s name was Robert Heilborn. Only a year or two older than me, he nevertheless called me Billy and didn’t tell me his first name. He had carefully combed brown hair, as neat as paint on a puppet. Someone must have stressed the importance of eye contact to him, because he stared as if to hypnotize me. It was hard to believe my mother’s life was in his small, scrubbed hands.
“You did a blood test on her?” I said, my voice rising.
“Routine,” he said. “It’s the law. I have to do it, It’s my job.”
“You have only one job,” I said, “and that is to save her life.”
“We’re doing everything we can, Billy. All of us. When she stabilizes a little, I’ve arranged a medevac to Albany, where they can deal with her burns more effectively than we can.”
“You can’t deal with her burns?”
“It’s a matter of equipment.”
“And we can’t get her up to Albany now?”
He shook his head. A fist closed on my heart and squeezed, like trying to get the last drop of juice out of a lemon.
Was it all that talk of Luke that rattled her enough to send her car out of control? Did I somehow help her get drunk the night before? What was going on in that hour before dawn? She was on her way to get bagels for our breakfast—granted, known, check. But what then? Was it a hallucination, or perhaps a seizure, that led her into that huge granite boulder on the side of the road—a damp gray monolith upon which someone had painted a grinning shark with a mouthful of ravenous red teeth? Shattered glass, twisted metal, and, finally, fire. By the time rescue workers got her out, she was unconscious, great mercy of the nervous system.
No one from the press had gotten wind of this yet, though eventually I knew that would happen. Luke had written dozens of songs about her, and she had figured prominently in most of the Luke biographies. Some enterprising little shit would put it together—I could count on it.
THOUGH my mother’s name is Rothschild, she bears no relation to the rich and powerful Rothschilds. There are no bankers, no vintners perched in Mother’s family tree. Hers was not even the sort of family that had a family tree. The origins of her family were somehow lost in the European mists, their roots buried beneath the mulch of pogroms, panicky migrations; and until prosperity struck some of the American Rothschilds after World War II, no one had paid much attention to who’d begot whom. In the World According to Grandpa, the fixation on ancestors was the folly of the goyim, and fancy- shmancy Jews. For Esther’s Rothschilds, my Rothschilds, there was a prevailing sense that if you looked deep enough into our origins, then you’d only find struggle, poverty, failure, shadi- ness, and shame.
The second thing about my mother was she was beautiful: raven-haired, fine-boned, bottle-green-eyed, porcelain-skinned, full-lipped, high-breasted, Jewish-American, soulful, outrageously beautiful.
You were my conscience, you were my guide
I felt like a king just to walk by your side
Your loveliness lit the sky like the dawn
So pink, so bright, I could go on and on.
Obsidian hair, black as coal
Green eyes that could look right into my soul
Beauty so vast, as deep as the sea
What were you doing with a clown like me?
—“Open Sesame,” recorded 1964
She was from Brooklyn, the only child of leftist, denunciatory parents, who filled her with Marxist orthodoxy and made her not only serious but heartbroken over the injustices of the world. It wasn’t what they intended, but Esther’s parents bequeathed to her the kind of geopolitical heebie-jeebies that made her sexually restless, a little less than careful, dressed her in black, put circles under her eyes, made her chew her cuticles so they looked like thatched roofs. She was, nonetheless, by the time she graduated Erasmus Hall High and entered Hunter College, a catch. Rich kids (relatively speaking), the best students, the handsomest and most popular boys, all flocked around Esther. At first
, she accepted this incomprehensible rush of attention, because it seemed inhospitable not to, and then, soon, she began to crave it, and, finally, she expected it. She wore black jeans, black cotton pullovers, dangling silver earrings from Mexico, a little eyeliner, lily-of-the-valley cologne. Professors fell all over themselves; the guys in the cafeteria heaped extra helpings of waxed beans, beets, and meat loaf onto her plate. Sid Holtzman, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama and who was then in the Hunter College Dramatic Society, wrote several plays expressly for her, but she never agreed to act in any of them, preferring to paint scenery, make suggestions, and offer that special, knowledgeable, sympathetic encouragement which soon would be nearly as heralded as her beauty.
Hey hey everybody did you hear the news?
I just got lucky and slept with The Muse.
—“Talking MacDougal Street Blues,”
recorded 1963
After college, she got a job waitressing at the Zen Cafe, working from seven in the evening until three in the morning. By day, she picketed the Woolworth’s in Greenwich Village in support of the Negroes who were trying to get served a little pie and ice cream, a cup of coffee for crying out loud, in various Woolworth’s south of the Mason-Dixon line, and were getting kicked, clubbed, and spit on for their efforts. When the news crew from NBC came down to photograph them picketing on Sixth Avenue, they made Esther the center of the story. Her picture ended up in Life and in Collier’s; for a while, she was the poster girl of the northern civil rights movement: a gorgeous Jewish college girl in a very becoming sweater.
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