Max Baer and the Star of David (16 page)

I went on to explain that my wife and I had met Max Baer while celebrating her twenty-first birthday, and that we had served him and his family faithfully for many years, and when I mentioned that his son and mine had been born less than six months apart, and had become great good friends, she asked me to tell her about Horace Jr., which I did, after which I asked her about her children, prefacing my question by noting that Doctor Levitzky had told me of their handicaps, and saying that if she preferred not to talk about them, I would understand. But she scoffed at my politeness, and said she felt herself doubly blessed—that her children were the jewels and miracles of her life—and we were off and flying then, trading stories about our children—she, too, it turned out, had once upon a time believed she would go through life without ever having a child of her own—and of what a great joy it was to see them grow and change. She told me, for example, about her daughter’s first day of kindergarten. The son, not yet in school, was seventeen months younger than the daughter, and had sulked most of the morning. When Miss Hémon asked him what was bothering him, he had remained mute. Suspecting the source of the problem, Miss Hémon asked if he was missing his sister. Her son had replied that yes, he missed his sister, and then, looking up, added: “But don’t tell her. Please?”

We also found ourselves talking of the frustrations that accompanied parenting—of our hopes for our children and, more, of our fears
for
our children. We talked about how it often seemed that in the end it all came down to nothing more—or less—than love and worry. The next thing I knew, she was glancing at her watch and informing me that nearly an hour had passed since my arrival, and that she had to leave in order to be home for her children. She apologized for not having introduced me to Hawkins Johnson, for not having given me a tour of the facility, or even—hadn’t this been the reason for my visit?—talked with me about the services the Lighthouse offered. Would I promise to return very soon so that—and here I sensed she was playfully mocking my decorous manner of speech—she might make proper amends and correct her errant ways?

I said I would welcome the opportunity, and when she suggested I return on the following Monday I said that I held meetings with my teams beginning at half-past three each Monday afternoon to discuss their training schedules for the coming week.

“Well then, Mister Littlejohn,” she said, “why don’t you see what you can do to rearrange your schedule so that we might continue our conversation. That is what our work here is about, after all, and we shouldn’t lose sight of it, wouldn’t you agree?”

She added that I need not respond to the antic and silly mood that unexpectedly, as now, often rose up within her. Saying this, she shook my hand, and led me to the door, and when she did I recalled two things I had noticed in the first moment I had looked upon her face—what, without eyeglasses, I might not have noticed: that though her coloring was far lighter than Joleen’s, she had put me in mind of what Joleen had looked like as a young woman. She was not, perhaps, as striking-looking as Joleen had been: she was more pretty than beautiful, more ordinary and plain than unusual or mysterious, yet she bore an uncanny resemblance to Joleen in the way a lighter-skinned younger sister might have resembled an older sister. And my eyes had been drawn, too, to her wide-set brown eyes and cheekbones, which were not quite as wide-set as Joleen’s, and to her mouth—to her full, plum-colored lips, and to a pale, thin vertical scar, perhaps a half inch in length, at the left corner of her lower lip and of how, when she smiled, the scar seemed to spread slightly, and to glisten in the way a leaf might when covered with a skin of morning dew. I wanted to touch the scar—to ask her how and why it was there—but instead I took the hand she extended, and said that unless she heard otherwise from me, I would look forward to seeing her at noon on Monday.

After Miss Hémon and I had exchanged perfunctory greetings about being pleased to see each other again, and she had informed me that she had written out a schedule for our visit, she leaned forward on her desk, her chin propped on clasped hands, and asked, pointedly, “Are you all
right
, Mister Littlejohn?”—to which I responded by asking her why she asked such a question, to which she, with a half smile, said that she asked it for no reason other than the fact that my hands were trembling, and my forehead and upper lip were beaded with sweat.

I patted my forehead and upper lip with a handkerchief, and then, without regard to consequences, I spoke.

“Yes,” I said, “I am all right, but sitting here and seeing you again, I
am
somewhat unnerved, for I am struck again, as I was during our meeting last week, by the fact that although there are significant differences, yet you do bear a remarkable resemblance to what my wife, Joleen, looked like when she was a young woman of your age.”

“And what age do you imagine that to be?” Miss Hémon asked.

“Although I do not know the ages of your children, which would allow me to give a more accurate estimate, I would guess that you are in your middle or late twenties.”

“Ah, Mister Littlejohn,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “You are trying to get into my good graces by flattery. Or perhaps you are merely doing what many men do when they wish to find favor in a woman’s eyes: telling her she is much younger than they know her to be.”

“Not at all,” I said quickly. “Oh not at all, Miss Hémon. Please believe me. If anything—if not for the fact that you told me you are mother to two children—if I had not known this fact, that is—I would have taken you for a woman in her
early
twenties.”

“I am thirty-eight years old,” she said.

“I am astonished,” I said. “And I must wonder how it is that you have such an unworried and youthful appearance.”

“Suffering,” she said.

“
Suffering?
”

“Yes, suffering, which when translated into the quotidian matter of my workaday life is interchangeable with responsibilities. Now
there’s
a word we might chew on for a while, don’t you think? For—to return your frankness with my own—it has been my
responsibilities
, I believe, especially for my children, that have kept me young, though not, as you would have it,
unworried.
” Then, before I could respond, she continued. “But look—just look at me, will you, please? Or rather, since you have clearly spent more than sufficient time doing that—
listen
to me!
Listen
to how I am talking!”

“To how you are you
talking?
” I said. “I don’t understand. You talk with great clarity—you are an exceptionally articulate woman.”

“How I am talking,” she laughed. “Why I am talking like
you
, Mister Littlejohn! I am using your most proper locutions as if I did so on a regular basis, and do you know what?”

“I do not.”

“I enjoy doing so,” she said. “I am what we call, in our practices,
mirroring you
, and isn’t that a wonder—that I am able to talk in this way, and how, pray tell—please, Mister Littlejohn—how pray tell am I doing so, and
why
am I doing so, and—more important—how did you come to speak in the way
you
do?”

Though both disarmed and enchanted by her directness, I responded in a calm and measured way. “It is a gift from my wife, Joleen, and to the two of us from the Holy Bible,” I explained. “For we often read from it to one another, and having led a somewhat isolated life—insular, one might say, for my wife and I have spent more time with one another, and with our son, than with others, with the exception, of course, of the time I spent traveling with Max Baer—we developed the habit, without knowing it
was
a habit, of talking with one another in the way people in the Bible talk. And…”

“And what?”

“… and until this moment I had never articulated in words how my manner of speaking—and of thinking, for that matter—came to be.”

“And mannered it surely is,” she said. “And how
wonderful
that it is, and that you and your wife have made your life with one another—your marriage—so unique by the
manner
of your communication.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

We sat in silence for a while, and then, softly, she spoke the very words I had been thinking but had not felt brave enough to express aloud.

“We are going to be good friends, I expect, aren’t we?” she said.

“I hope so,” I said.

“But I also expect to help you in the journey you have begun—a journey that will enable you to see the world, its people and wonders—and its darkness, too, for sure—when your eyes may no longer be of assistance to you
on
your journey. So let me explain what services we offer for people of limited vision here—services we hope you will not need for some time, and let me also inform you of the more complete range of services we can offer if and when your vision does decline significantly.”

I nodded my assent, after which she led me on a tour of the building. We started in the library, on the ground floor, where she introduced me to the head librarian, Miss Florence Duncan, a stout lady with voluminous braids of white hair held in place atop her head with ornaments and pins. An assortment of some half dozen necklaces—strands of pearls and strings of what appeared to be precious stones—hung around her neck and rested on an exceptionally ample bosom. She had several items in readiness for my arrival—large-print books, books printed in Braille, and books about learning how to read Braille. She showed me a microfilm reader that would be available to me, and how to operate it so as to enlarge texts I would see on its screen. She provided me with pamphlets about the library’s contents and use—in print, and in Braille—and a brochure about the classes in learning to read Braille that the Lighthouse offered. To virtually every presentation and explanation she made, she would add: “Do you see what I mean, Mister Littlejohn?”

She also showed me a short film about the history of the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind, which, I learned, had been founded in 1902, and had been housed originally in the basement of San Francisco’s main library. Shortly before the First World War it acquired a home of its own—it had since moved again, to its present location—and had been renowned, as it still was, for its “blindcraft”: the production, by its blind members, of brooms, baskets, and, more recently, furniture.

She showed me where I would find boxes of alphabet cards I could employ for practicing my skills at reading Braille, and she showed me Braille typewriters, and slates and styluses used for writing Braille by hand. She introduced me to her assistants-in-training, Pamela and Gail, both of whom were blind. They were, she laughed, “star
pupils
in her eyes,” and these two individuals, whom I judged to be in their early thirties, performed for me: reading aloud passages from the Bible—I recognized them as being from The Book of Daniel—while running their fingers along embossed dots on sheets of Braille script. They typed out words on Braille typewriters, and they wrote, in Braille, on their slates, and on paper, and when one of them turned over a page the other had written, and skimmed the surface of the page with her fingertips, she was able to translate the newly formed dots into words that—she gave me the sheet of paper to keep as a souvenir of my visit—warmly welcomed Mister Horace Littlejohn to the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind.

I suppose I should have been cheered by their skillfulness—by the knowledge that, even were I to become blind, I would still be able to read and, as I would learn from others Miss Hémon introduced me to that day, to get along in the world with reasonable efficiency—but though outwardly I voiced gratitude, inwardly I felt lost.

Miss Hémon took my arm, and led me from the library even while thanking Miss Duncan and her assistants, and apologizing to them for our hasty exit. She said there were others waiting to meet with us, and in the way she turned me toward the door, I felt as if she were already guiding a blind person toward an unseen destination. Did she sense my unease? My sorrow? Could she have known, despite my outward demeanor, or
because
of it, how sad I felt to be there, and to be contemplating a life wherein I would one day have to imagine the world into being? Could she hear the ragged tumblings of my soul, or sense the strange tightening I felt in my chest?

Miss Hémon next introduced me to Richard Ratner, program director of the Lighthouse—one of the few individuals on staff who, like her, had normal vision—and who talked about programs the Lighthouse offered: Braille classes, of course, and also cooking classes, classes devoted to home safety and daily living skills, as well as to transportation, travel, and employment. We then left the main building, where, as if leading us around a movie studio lot, he took us into an annex—a cottage containing several rooms, in which rooms, including a kitchen with ingeniously designed utensils and appliances, Lighthouse members could learn to navigate safely on their own, and to perform domestic chores. He showed me pictures of Enchanted Hills Camp, a Lighthouse retreat of more than three hundred acres, near the city of Napa, where both visually and hearing impaired individuals could meet and socialize with others who shared their disabilities.

He ended his presentation by escorting us to the second-floor store, where Phillip Yarnell, the man in charge, expounded on various items that could be purchased: canes and cane tips, magnifying glasses, binoculars, slates and styluses, alphabet cards, watches whose clear plastic lids opened so you could read the time with your fingers, and books printed in Braille.

We then accompanied Mister Yarnell to the basement, and to the Lighthouse’s pride and joy: its Blindcraft Center, where on this day some dozen or so men and women were working at tasks involved in the making of baskets, brooms, and furniture. There were three paid staff members working with them, and the room was filled with noise and chatter. Having enjoyed, through the years, repairing and constructing small items—bookcases, chairs, tables—for Joleen and myself, as well as helping in the physical maintenance of the Baer household and ranch—I found myself waking from my despondent state. I watched two sightless men, in carpenter’s overalls, on a raised platform in the room’s center, joining together the parts of a large table. I introduced myself to the men, said that the table was more than admirable, and that, perhaps—I said this so they would understand I was knowledgeable enough to appreciate the quality of their work—when a stain had been applied, and a preservative coat of oil, shellac, or wax, I would return so that—we laughed at my choice of words—I could see it in its
finished
incarnation.