The Golden Willow (10 page)

Saturday was music day in our house. Every Saturday I drove Charlie into Manhattan to the Henry Street Settlement, where he was being taught to play the clarinet. We had been determined that our children should learn to play some instrument, and at first with Charlie it had been the violin, chiefly because I owned one from a period in my life when I attempted to learn to play it and then, having failed, had put it away in a closet. But now I brought it out, dusted it off, and gave it to my son to carry on where I had left off.

There was an orchestra at school, and at the head of it was a poor devil of a man who not only conducted but undertook to teach the students various other instruments of which he knew little. The man was half crazed with his efforts and the results he got, and sometimes he completely lost control of himself and beat the young would-be musician over the head with whatever instrument the child happened to be playing. I know Charlie got it several times with his violin, and I had to do some repair work on the fiddle.

But without ever really learning how to play his violin, Charlie was admitted to the orchestra, and a mishap took place the first day. He should never have started to learn to play this instrument in the first place because he was left-handed, and his partner in the orchestra was on that side, and when Charlie drew his bow his left elbow went into the eye of the kid beside him, knocking his eyeglasses off and almost costing him an eye. Charlie was thrown out of
the orchestra at once, and the enraged conductor sent his fiddle flying after him.

We put the fiddle away for good this time, and to this day it still resides in my closet gathering dust. It shall never be played again.

But eventually Charlie's fancy turned to the clarinet, chiefly because he had seen Benny Goodman play in a movie and was inspired to follow in his footsteps. I had no objection, even though the clarinet cost me a hundred dollars. A friend steered me to the Henry Street Settlement, where they had competent teachers for all instruments and where lessons were cheap. But we had to be there by eleven and it took an hour of driving in the car to get there. That meant I had to leave no later than ten, and on this particular Saturday morning at ten Charlie was not back yet from wherever it was he had gone on his bike. I was furious. I stood outside and looked this way and that, and Ruby did some telephoning of neighbors to find out if he was with one of them.

Finally, he came tearing down the street on his bike. He was sorry. He was always sorry, abjectly. I resisted clouting him on the head and told him to get into the car, and he did. I blame myself for what followed, though it really wasn't my fault. What happened was that I raced to get to Manhattan on time, and in my rush I went through a red light and was stopped by a cop and given a ticket.

We got to the Henry Street Settlement later than ever, but at least there was still time for the lesson, and I had to be satisfied with that.

“All right,” I said roughly to Charlie. “Get going.”

He was still sitting in the seat beside me, not moving. “Dad,” he said, “I can't.”

“What d'you mean, you can't?” I snapped. “Go on, just go.”

“I can't,” he repeated, still not moving.

“Why?” I shouted. “Why can't you?”

“I forgot my clarinet.”

This was one of those moments that doctors warn you about, when your blood pressure soars, potentially causing a stroke. I think I may have been very near that. However, I had gone through many trials in my life before this, and I'd learned something about control, which came in handy then. Something else came to my rescue too, after I had arrived home and told Ruby about it. Ruby also was blessed with this same thing: a sense of humor. We both had a good long laugh. But privately, without letting Charlie know.

T
HERE ARE MANY OCCASIONS
in the process of raising children when a sense of humor is badly needed to save you from bursting a blood vessel. There was one other that I recall. Both my children, different from each other as they were, shared one thing in common, a love of animals, and Ruby and I had catered to that love, believing that the care of living creatures was an important part of a child's upbringing. It was fortunate that we had a house large enough for both animals and humans because in those early years of their childhood it became filled with cats and dogs, mostly homeless ones that the children's soft hearts had led them to pick up and bring home. But there were also parakeets, canaries, turtles, hamsters, and chickens. Yes, chickens. I fenced off a portion of the backyard for them, and we had a mini chicken farm that brought many objections from neighbors.

Hamsters were their latest craze. Charlie, who was generally in charge of the family pets, had decided he wanted to raise them and sell them to people, so we had a male hamster and a female hamster in one cage. There was either a lack of love between the two hamsters
or a lack of knowledge about breeding because the match failed. And still Charlie, with Adraenne always going along with him, wanted a family of baby hamsters to raise, and it so happened that his birthday came along at this time and he asked that for a present we buy him a pregnant hamster.

How could we refuse? But where could we find a pregnant hamster? I went from pet store to pet store asking for one, but to no avail. I refused to give up. I had promised him I would get him a pregnant hamster, and I was determined to keep that promise. I called pet stores miles away and asked, and at last hit the right one. They had a pregnant hamster. It was far away in Pennsylvania. I drove out there and bought it; there was no doubt of its being pregnant. It was big and fat. The proprietor put it in a box for me and I put the box in the back seat of my car; I remember feeling elated, as if I'd struck gold.

I'd be just in time. Charlie's birthday was the following day. Meanwhile, the hamster would be safe in the back of the car. Just to be sure, however, I went to look. The box was empty. I was stunned. I looked around the entire car. There was no hamster anywhere. I looked under the seats, even in the glove compartment, but no hamster. How could it possibly have escaped, first from the box in which the pet store owner had put it, then from a locked car?

It was a good thing I gave a last despairing glance around, for I glanced upward and saw movement in the lining that covered the inside of the roof. Quite distinctly, there was a lump of some sort, and it was moving very slowly. I reached up with a hand and felt it. There was warmth and no longer any doubt in my mind that this was the pregnant hamster. How it had escaped from the box and how it had found its way up there will always remain a mystery, but the next important question was how to get it out of there.

I realized at once that I could never do it myself, and there was only one place I could take it to get it out: the dealer. I hesitated, and for good reason. I had bought the car only recently but had been back to the dealer with it numerous times and for various reasons, most of which I am sure the dealer considered the imagination of a neurotic customer. They were perfectly justifiable complaints to me—a squeak here, a squeak there, a strange noise in the engine, a stiffness in the steering wheel, a funny sound in one wheel. I was determined to have every little thing satisfied before the warranty ran out. But now I had to go back to him with an entirely new complaint: a hamster stuck in the roof of the car. Little wonder that I hesitated.

But it was the only way I could get that hamster out of there and to my son for his birthday. And what if it gave birth while it was still stuck up there? The horror of this frightful possibility overcame all the hesitation and embarrassment I might have felt.

I think they had seen me come so often with my car to the place where I'd bought it that the dealer had posted a lookout to warn him because several of the last times I had been there he'd been out of his office and not to be found. But a few weeks had passed since the last time and I caught him unawares. He gaped up at me from his desk as I marched into his office.

“What now?” he managed to say.

“I'm sorry,” I apologized, “but I'm afraid I've got another problem with the car.”

“What sort of problem?” he asked, looking as if he was about to duck out anyway.

“I've got a hamster stuck in the roof of the car, and it looks as if you're going to have to take the lining out to get to it.”

For a moment he didn't say anything. He simply gazed up at me
with his mouth open. He was a rather short, fat man with a thick, fleshy face; his wide mouth was open, showing a row of glistening white teeth that were obviously not his own, although that has nothing to do with my story. He finally spoke in a sort of strangled voice: “Will you say that again?”

I repeated what I had said, suddenly conscious of the fact that he might not even know what a hamster was. He didn't, and I explained it to him and went on further to add that it was pregnant and might give birth to its young ones, and since hamsters could have as many as a dozen at one time they'd be all over the car in various tight places. But I had only worsened things.

He took all of this in with a hand clapped to his forehead and a despairing look on his face, and then he called for his head serviceman. I knew him, just as he knew me. His name was Shawn. He was Irish. He was tall and lanky with very black hair, and he had a temper. We'd had a lot of arguments before this, and as he came into the office, chewing tobacco as he always did, his eyes told me what he thought of me.

“Shawn,” the dealer said, “guess what the trouble is now?”

Shawn shifted the wad inside his mouth from one side to the other and bent his head a little, as if looking for a place to spit. “I'll bet he's got a rattle in the glove compartment,” he said.

They must have done plenty of talking about me. I tried to smile, but I wished I hadn't come.

“You mean a rattlesnake,” the dealer said. “No, it isn't that. It's something in the roof of his car. A hamster.”

“A what?” The mouth opened and tobacco juice dribbled out onto his chin. He wiped it with the back of a hand that was blackened with oil, leaving a dirt mark on the chin. “What did you say?”

The dealer repeated it and went on. “It's pregnant too, and we've
got to get it out fast before it gives birth and scatters its kids all over the car, maybe in the engine.”

Then Shawn did something I had never seen him do before. He laughed. It was roaring laughter, with him bent over, and the wad of tobacco came out onto the floor. He picked it up and threw it into the wastebasket, still convulsed with laughter.

There's no need to go any further with the story. They took care of it, and I waited while they did it, and this time it was not covered by the warranty and I could not argue that part of it. I winced when I got the bill. It was heavy, and I think it made up for all the other jobs they'd had to do for me without payment. But the worst part came when they found the hamster and brought it to me. It was no longer moving. It was dead.

I think for a moment I had some wild thought of taking the corpse to a vet and having him open the creature with the possibility that the young hamsters might be alive. But by that time I was sick of hamsters and I let them dump it into a waste bin.

It was hard breaking the news to the kids the next day. Adraenne took it nicely, but Charlie was wild with disappointment and frustration and wept bitterly until I gave him the gift I had bought for him in place of the hamster. It was an electric train set and it made up for his great loss, but not completely, and it never would. I think he still mourns the loss of that pregnant hamster to this day, and right now he's well into his sixties and has five children of his own. He also has a dog and two cats and has lost none of his love for living things.

N
IGHTS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FOR SLEEP OR REST OR FOR MAKING
love, but for me in those days after Ruby died they were endless nights of torture that seemed never to be over. I would lie awake staring up in the darkness, my mind active and my thoughts driving from one thing to another, mostly about Ruby and the time we'd spent together, and the things we'd talked about and the places we'd gone to. And all the time I was conscious of the emptiness of the bed beside me: When I stretched out my arm onto the pillow her head was not there, nor was there the warmth of her body.

Even getting into bed was a misery, not finding her there, the bed cold and empty. I could not stop thinking of her and wanting her. One night, though, I must have managed to doze off to sleep, and suddenly I heard her voice.

“Harry!”

It came to me clearly and distinctly, and I was convinced it had not been in my sleep. I shot up in bed and listened. There was nothing but that ringing silence throughout the house. I was so sure, however, that I had heard her voice cry out that I got out of bed and began to prowl through the rooms looking for her. I did not turn on lights. I went from room to room searching through the darkness, groping my way like a sleepwalker, although I knew I was fully awake.

Once, I remember, I called out to her questioningly: “Ruby?” I paused to listen. There was no answer, and I went back to bed, still quite sure that I had not been dreaming when I heard her voice.

It troubled me for days afterward, and I began to wonder if I was losing my mind. I worried over it, and I thought of it when I lay awake at night in bed. I did not believe in a hereafter. I did not believe that Ruby was up there in heaven, smiling down at me, waiting for me to join her, as some people had said in trying to comfort me for my loss of her. Then what was it that made me feel even days later that I had heard her voice?

I could not in any way account for it, nor did the voice ever come again, but out of it came the realization that if I did not do something soon to occupy my mind with some useful purpose, I might lose that mind. And once again came the thought of going back to my writing. But write what? I racked my brain for a subject that would interest me—and other people too, should I decide to try to get it published.

Lying there awake at night, with my thoughts flitting back and forth at random with no particular sequence—an event here, an event there, a place we had been to, people we had met, all racing through my mind helter-skelter, like a film that had lost control in the projector—I found myself thinking at a calmer pace of my
childhood in England. The pictures were quite clear, particularly the street on which I had lived with its two rows of sad-looking brick houses facing each other across the cobblestones, with their slanted slate roofs and short, stubby chimneys sticking up into gray skies with smoke curling out of them.