Drunken Angel (9781936740062)

by Kaufman, Alan

  In the mall, everything was closed. We found a single store open, from which we came away with a small fishing rod. Isadora had told me of her great fondness for beaches and water, but this gift, too, was all wrong. She led me to her favorite haunt, a huge ugly manufacturing plant with chemical-green pools that Isadora traversed by means of plank bridges, and then to the shore, to shoals and tide pools where she squatted, pointing out the various sea-life amusements, starfish and anemones and shells—and then we walked hand in hand down the beach. It seemed like the right time to bring up the amends that I had come to make, even though I was already living it just by being here. Still, some words, I felt, were in order.

  “Izzy, do you know what an alcoholic is?”

  “No,” she said, quickly shaking her head without meeting my eyes.

  “It’s someone who gets very, very sick, and also crazy, when they drink beer or wine or brandy or whiskey. Anything with alcohol in it. So, they call such a person an alcoholic.”

  She now stared at me with interest.

  “It makes them so sick that they could die, but they can’t stop drinking it.”

  “Are you an alcoholic?” she asked.

  Sharp kid!

  “Yes, yes, I am. And that’s the reason why you haven’t seen me all these years. I’ve been very, very sick and trying very hard to get well.”

  “Are you better?”

  “Yes, I think I am.”

  “So, are you going to stay now with me and Mommy?”

  “Your mother and I are only friends now. We’re not married anymore. I’m your father, and for as long as you let me, I promise to be in your life.”

  “Then why do you have to go? Why can’t you stay?”

  “Well, I’ve got a home and a girlfriend and all my friends and a career in San Francisco. My whole life is there now, except for you.”

  “Why don’t you live in Israel?”

  “I love Israel, Izzy. But I’m a writer in English. To do what I do, I really need to be there, where English is spoken and written.”

  “But you could if you wanted.”

  “The best would be if I could live some of the time here and some there. But I’m afraid I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Why don’t you get the money?”

  I closed my eyes, said a little prayer to know what to say, how to answer. And the answer was to be who I really am, as truthful as I could be. Never to lie to her, even if I didn’t come out looking the way I’d like her to see me.

  “I can’t seem to, Izzy. I try, but I have a long way to go. I’m a writer and I don’t make much money at it and I’m still learning. I’m doing the best I know how. But I need a lot more time.

  She thought about it. And then she said, “But Mummy said you were a soldier in the IDF? Were you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I was.”

  She looked extremely proud of me and said: “You’re Alan Kaufman! You can do anything!” and with her little hand slapped the small of my back encouragingly.

  There is no greater encouragement in life than your own daughter’s belief in you.

  “Thank you, sweetheart. We’ll see. I’ll try. I swear, I will.”

  “Promise!”

  “I promise!”

  She was so happy that she danced spinning over the sand with arms outflung against the sunset, a bronze-fired silhouette, and I felt that I had made the verbal amends that I had come for, and that now, in earnest, the living part of the amends could really commence, for a relationship had been established between her and me. Never again would I disappear from her life. From here on, we would be in whatever kind of communication life and circumstances would allow, and through it all she would know: she has a father who loves her.

  67

  I TRAVELED BACK TO JERUSALEM THAT NIGHT, promising to return first thing the next day. Izzy looked so stricken when I departed. I made sure to call when I got back, to let her know that I was thinking of her. Esther put her on the phone and we talked for a long time.

  That night, I went to a 12-step meeting, my first in Israel, where often they are held in unused bomb shelters that serve when full-scale war erupts but then revert back to community centers in less threatening times. This one, though, was held in a rehab clinic. All kinds of people showed up to the meeting, including a religious Jew and an Israeli Arab. Wherever one stood in the complex spectrum of life, one left it at the meeting door. Alcoholism and drug addiction are the great equalizers, reducing all to the same common denominator: a dying human whose body and mind no longer make life viable and who, regardless of social station, religion, or politics, must reach out to others in recovery for survival and must find a Higher Power through pursuit of a spiritual life grounded in love, unity, and service.

  When I told of my purpose in coming to Israel, to make amends to my daughter, they all nodded approvingly and spoke of the great example that I was setting for them.

  The religious Jew said: “You have the willingness to go halfway around the world to set things straight. That is willingness to go to any length to stay sober. But also, it shows a certain truth about life. The more sober you get, the more clearly you feel, the more you want to see your Isadora. Love keeps pushing to the surface. And moving you to do what is right. That is what I called God.”

  The Israeli Arab spoke of his estrangement from his family, whom he had dishonored and abandoned. My story gave him hope that if he stayed sober he may yet sit to table with them.

  “May Allah make it so,” said the religious Jew.

  At meeting’s end, we all joined hands and heads lowered, said the Serenity Prayer.

  The next morning, I arrived in Ashdod and hurried to Isadora. A short, slender, swarthy man in house slippers let me in. Esther introduced him as Yaacov, a Bosnian refugee working in construction. We shook hands.

  “He’s my lover,” she said in the kitchen as Yaacov descended to the outdoor trash receptacles with a bag of garbage.

  “Good for you,” I said. “How do he and Izzy get along?”

  “They love each other.”

  “Great!” I said.

  He seemed nice enough, nondescript, plainspoken, pleasant smile. Isadora appeared a little awkward around him, not as loving as Esther claimed, but I saw no special significance in this. I wanted to be alone with my daughter, but Esther insisted that we all remain together, and so we did. There was no chance of one-on-one communication with Isadora. We went out to the seaside and walked around eating ices, taking in the festive, bustling oceanfront scene. That evening, they insisted that I sleep over rather than return on the late bus to Jerusalem. Isadora couldn’t bear the thought of my going. Of course I agreed.

  I was to sleep on the kitchen floor, where I curled on a blanket amid caked cat food, hairballs, and dust. I would have slept on a bed of hot coals to be near her. Later in the evening, Esther decided to sleep with Isadora and I should come off the floor to share the large living-room sofa bed with Yaacov. I complied.

  Yaacov and I made some stilted small talk before he dozed. I lay awake, thinking of Izzy, wondering how she was, grieving a little to find her in such squalor. What a mess. An alcoholic father, a mentally unbalanced mother, and on both sides penniless bohemians.

  She appeared, whispering on bare feet out of the dark to the foot of the bed, and crawled in and cuddled up against me. I encircled her with my arm, heart pounding, held her. My little daughter. My Isadora. This I could give her, the sense of me, my speechless, wordless love. My warmth. The love of my bones and blood. My adult solidity and protection. This I could give, regardless of my empty bank account. It did not add up in dollars and cents. Just breathe, I told myself, and let her breathe beside you. That’s enough.

  It was more than I could have hoped for. I prayed: God, watch over this child. Give me strength to be her father, to stay sober, and give her strength to live despite all.

  Just then, Yaacov stirred. Izzy’s body froze. She went completely cold. He said: “Izzy?�
�� and she slipped away, disappeared.

  The next day, she insisted, to my extreme joy, that I take her to school. Off we went, hand in hand, she with her little backpack, pointing out things special to her in the run-down landscape: a playground where she and her friends liked to go, certain cats she had named, places where friends lived. At the school she released my hand and said: “Come in with me. To meet my teacher.”

  “I will, sweetheart. I’m just going to stand out here for a moment, okay? And I’ll be right in.”

  She trundled down the path, her little backpack on her shoulders. I paused to watch her, overcome with sorrow, grief, to realize all the days of her life that I had missed, the special occasions, the first day at school, school plays, performances, sports events, bake sales. How many days of seeing her in her little backpack had I missed? They haunted me, embodied ghosts of lost, wasted years—a black hole. I hung my head and wept to think of it. And waited for the fierce sun of Israel to dry my tears before entering.

  The teacher stood to receive me. “How is your Hebrew?” she asked in English.

  “My speaking level is good.”

  “Welcome,” she said in Hebrew.

  Isadora turned to the owl-eyed curious class and said boldly, standing beside me: “This is my father, Alan, from San Francisco. He was an IDF soldier.”

  In Israel, every father is a soldier, serves in the army. It is a sign of normalcy, and my having served normalized her in their eyes, was one less way in which she would have to feel different.

  “He is a writer.”

  They stared at me.

  I smiled and waved and said: “I’m Izzy’s father. I love her very much. It’s nice to meet you.”

  They applauded, and the teacher smiled and nodded that this would be a good time to leave.

  That week, I helped Izzy with her homework every night. We spent every possible moment together. I passed hours with her and her friends—a little friend club of which I became a full-fledged temporary member.

  Yaacov and I spoke little and stayed out of each other’s way. But at one point I said: “I’m very glad that Esther has you and that Izzy can depend on you when I’m not here. Let’s both be good fathers to that wonderful little girl.”

  He only smiled. I found it hard to get a sense of him, but I was only a guest here, felt fortunate even to be allowed to see Isadora. I chalked up my inability to read Yaacov to language barriers, cultural differences. Or there may have been a problem lurking, some jealousy he felt at my suddenly showing up. Perhaps my appearance had raised tensions between him and Esther, or set him against me, which in turn might confuse Izzy, her love divided between him and me: a very tough dilemma for a child who had already lost, for a time, her dad. In truth, I just didn’t know. I had to remind myself that just a while ago I had been little short of Satan to my ex. And then the moment I dreaded, that Isadora feared, arrived: I must leave.

  She seemed fine for a little while, but as the hour approached she began to ask, at first calmly and then ever more emphatically, why I must go.

  Then it was time. Esther and Yaacov left the room so that Isadora and I could say our goodbyes.

  “Why must you go, Daddy?”

  “Sweetheart, I love you. But I don’t live here. I live in San Francisco. All my work is there, my friends, my recovery groups, my partner, Lana, my apartment. I have nothing here to make a beginning with—no money, no possibility of employment. You are here and you are important to my life and I will be back, I swear that I will. I will always be in your life for as long as you let me. I will never disappear on you ever again. We can talk by phone, we can write. I’m your daddy, Isadora, and I’ll always love you.”

  Words. Empty words. Sometimes I hate words. Sometimes they fail human experience. Sometimes words are a way to avoid the truth. But in the mouth of an innocent child, words have the clarity and pinpoint precision of a laser beam.

  She collapsed onto the bed and began to sob inconsolably, sobs that shook her little body, that seemed to begin in a place buried so deep away, a grief so dark and great that no one could find it and from which violent tremors shuddered to the surface and convulsed her in an agony of loss.

  I closed my eyes, prayed to my Higher Power to know what to do, and the answer came: Let her have her feelings, let her say what she needs to say and remain by her side until you have to go.

  I laid my hand on her gently and said: “I love you.”

  And she cried out: “Why do you have to go? Why? Why are you always going?”

  The truth of it cut me to the soul.

  Why are you always going?

  All my life, I had been going, fleeing, leaving. Home, friends, jobs. Cities, countries, armies. Marriages, families—everything, everyone, everywhere, always. For a time I was there and then, gone.

  Why was I always going?

  Even as a writer, what had defeated me, in part, was my inability to complete anything. I didn’t finish what I began. Left things half done, grew bored or frightened, or frustrated, and lit out for other, another, elsewhere, different: anything but this, anyone but you, anywhere but here.

  Why are you always going?

  I didn’t know. For once in my life was answerless.

  But as she wept I remembered her little feet on the hardwood floors of our Park Slope apartment, the way she clung to my leg, cheek pressed to my shin, as I waited to head back to the bar at Billy’s Topless, wordlessly begging me not to go—and how I looked into her eyes and felt so much love yet was helpless not to leave, had to go have my alcohol. Not even her love could stand between me and booze. Booze had been my lord and master, the tyrant that posed as a liberator, destroyed what it seemed to liberate.

  And I saw, understood, here before me as she cried, the full consequences of my drinking career: how the innocent suffer, how unforgivable it is, how utterly irresponsible.

  I hung my head in shame. Esther looked in, said: “You’ll miss your bus.”

  Slowly, I stood. Isadora clasped my hand. We held on to each other so fiercely, with so much longing.

  “Come with me to the bus,” I said. “Sweetheart, let’s go together.”

  She sat up, eyes puffed with tears, clinging to my hand, and we left with Esther and Yaacov following behind. At the bus, I kneeled before her and said: “Give me a hug so big it will hug us both all the way home.”

  She encircled my neck and buried her crying face into my shoulder and held on and squeezed, squeezed with all her love, all her longing, all her hope, all her heart, all her wanting to have a daddy.

  Then it was time to board. She couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t release me. Esther pried away Isadora’s arms.

  “This is not goodbye,” I said. “I’m your father. I’ll always be your father. That never ends.”

  And turned and walked to the bus and boarded with her cries in my ears.

  Yaacov held her back. I took a seat, pushed open the window. Izzy reached out with both arms, imploring. I stretched out my arm. Our fingers touched. The bus began to move. And then she was gone.

  68

  WHEN I RETURNED TO SAN FRANCISCO, I COULDN’T bear the thought of giving another poetry reading or ever writing another poem again. Sat in cafés bleakly staring out of windows. All of it—Isadora, Germany, Israel—triggered a sadness that lodged in my chest, wouldn’t budge, and petrified my spirit in stone.

  I told Old Ray about Isadora. What should I do? More would be revealed, he said. But for now, aspects of life long repressed with drinking had come to the fore and I should stay open, see what my Higher Power had in store. In the meantime, why not look further into Judaism, even for a possible synagogue to attend?

  Tore the list of shuls from an old Yellow Pages and went on a quest, from one to the next, to see which, if any, resonated.

  None did.

  Conservative, Reform. Orthodox. A barrier stood between me and the congregants, the very settings. I disliked having to pay an annual fee for full membership in a shul.
Shouldn’t worship be free? Reform temple services seemed too Christian, Conservative temples too middle class, Orthodox too rigid.

  Anshei Ha’sefer at 23rd and Taraval was last on my list, all the way across San Francisco.

  Small shul housed in the building of the Humanistic Society. In the pews, elderly, most with numbers tattooed on their arms: Holocaust survivors. They bore an air of invincible desolation, which appealed to me.

  The rabbi, Jack Frankel, was an American-born Israeli Army veteran in his late sixties, the former rabbi of Anchorage, Alaska, where he administered last rites to Eskimos and gun-bearing trappers; previous to that had been a rabbi in Reno, Nevada, where he ministered to prison inmates and professional gamblers. He was Jack London meets the Torah, rabbinical rogue and ladies’ man. My sort of guy. All the women congregants batted eyes at him and despised his wife, Brue, a toy manufacturing millionaire with a vicious temper.

  I sat in back, dressed in my plaid shirt with torn sleeves, long black hair, and gold earring.

  At a certain point in the morning ritual, two or three of the elderlies crowded around and one said: “Young man. Would you mind very much to remove the big Torah from the cabinet and carry it up and down the aisles? The poor rabbi has been doing it every week and he’s going to give himself a hernia. No one else is strong enough.”

  “Sure,” I said, slightly abashed. Had never carried a Torah before. Seemed like a singular mystical sort of honor. But what if, God forbid, I dropped it? Balancing its handles, hoisted it aloft, walked up and down as congregants pressed the fringes of their talisman to the Torah, planting kisses.

  After the service, they said a blessing on the challah, and I readied myself to slip away. I’d had my synagogue experience, didn’t plan a return. But as I moved to the exit several of the congregants closed around.

  “Young man, would you mind very much to come next week and carry the Torah again?”

  They looked up at me with such hope, I couldn’t refuse. To stay would be amends for all the times I’d left when I should have stayed. Ended up going to that congregation for four years. Jewish guilt: it works.