The Poison Tree (24 page)

“How can you say such a thing? That's cruel. Polonius was a good, kind man,” she said sadly, “like my Papa, or your Uncle Lee.”

“He was nothing like Gramps; he was a snoop. What was he doing snooping there in the first place?”

I began walking feverishly around the dining room table. This was something I had wanted to say for years, and now I had a perfect excuse. The characters from
Hamlet
had sprung to life in my mother's mind, and had become metamorphosed into people from her family: my father was of course, Claudius; she herself was Gertrude; I was Hamlet; Polonius could be either her father or Uncle Lee depending on the situation. My view was that if Uncle Lee happened to get stabbed listening in on my conversations (as happened more than once at Gramsie's house where telephone conversations were never private), he deserved what he got.

“Polonius was there to help protect Hamlet's mother,” she said, defensively. “A woman alone, attacked by her son … it was unfair. What was her name again?”

“Gertrude, Mom. How could you forget her name? I thought you were such a brilliant student? Unlike me.” My sarcasm was modulating into anger.

“Of course, Gertrude. I remember attending Mark Van Doren's lectures on Shakespeare at Columbia … such brilliant men. I have my essays from those courses somewhere … did I ever show them to you? I got straight A's from both Professor Van Doren and Professor Trilling. And they never, and I mean never, gave A's.” She gazed towards her bedroom where the essays were buried in one of her countless boxes.

“You've shown me the essays.” I said.

“Oh. Where were we?”

“Wisconsin,” I said. “I was admitted there, remember.” My anger was growing in direct proportion to her obliviousness.

“Yes, I remember, and I won't sit back and see you ruining yourself by going to a state school.”

“It's a terrific school, Mom. My college counselor says it's one of the top schools in the Midwest academically. Besides, with my grades and SAT scores, I'm lucky to get in anywhere.”

“How dare you say that?”

“Because it's true!” I was desperate now. “It's not like I've been admitted anywhere else. I even got rejected by a school you said must have been named after a candy bar!” I was referring to Clark University. She was sensitive about this topic; she even went crazy when she once heard me humming The Beatles' “I'm a Loser” in the shower. She even refused to let me see the
Follow Me Boys
movie since Walt Disney had died just prior to its release. Mom knew those boys must be following him to the grave.

“You know how I feel about you low-rating yourself,” she said. “Besides, I have custody of you until you're twenty-one. I have it all worked out. Professor Mosley says you'll be enrolled at Columbia by Christmas.”

“What! What are you talking about?”

“My Hen-yie at Columbia! Won't that be wonderful? You are still my Hen-yie, aren't you?” She started calling me this childish nickname when she was wildly enthusiastic.

“Please don't take this the wrong way, Mom, okay? I don't want to go to college in New York.”

“That's ridiculous! Why not?”

“Hasn't Horace Mann proved anything to you?”

“Yes—that you have a despicable, cruel bastard for a father.”

“And you think it will be better for me here? Who's Professor Mosley anyway?”

“A neighbor from our apartment on Riverside Drive. He teaches History there.”

“And he can get me into Columbia?”

“I'm absolutely positive of it!”

I had a sinking feeling about my mother's plan that I couldn't define, except that I wanted no part of it. My mother, however, began to gleefully fantasize about the next four years with me living at home.

“You know that President Dwight David Eisenhower signed my diploma when I graduated Teacher's College for my Master's. I was pregnant with you then, so it's almost as though you've already been matric—”

“I really think it would be better for me to get away for college—to be on my own.”

“I wonder who you sound like now? Don't forget that you're gifted! It all has to do with your father. Until he left, you had straight A's.”

“Mom, I never got straight A's—not since second grade with Miss Hunt; in fact, that was my high point, academically.”

“Defeatist! Damned defeatist! Don't you dare say that—you were always the smartest boy in your class. Remember how you skipped first grade when you got to Hunter? You walked in, could read better than any of them … you could read at three. Doctor Brumbaugh said you were the smartest, most beautiful little boy she had ever seen—those blonde curls! And don't forget you were potty-trained at six months!”

“Mom, nobody is ‘potty trained' at six months. It's impossible.”

“SIX MONTHS!” Now things were serious. I had stepped on a land mine. “Listen to me, Henry. I'm talking to you. Please sit down next to me. Please.”

I did as I was told.

“Now, as God is my witness you were not only toilet trained at six months, you could read at three years old. You can ask Gramsie if you don't believe me. You are gifted. And you are God's own dear child. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mom, if you say so.”

“Don't be condescending about it.”

Even if true, the correlation between toilet training and academic excellence
was a principle that eluded me then, and still does. Nevertheless, to my mother, there was an inextricable link between the two. No matter who won our fights, on that one point she never wavered.

I left for Wisconsin. My mother continued to resent my leaving home, and turned her cheek when I kissed her goodbye. But she hadn't said anything about transferring to Columbia for several days, and seemed to accept my decision to fly to Madison with my father for orientation and placement examinations in French, Math, and English. In a few days time, I would begin my new life as a college freshman. I was excited to start over in a place where no one knew me, and where I could reinvent myself and become the person I wanted to be. As I sat at a little wooden desk with four No. 2 pencils and a pink eraser, I prepared to begin the first of several placement tests at the University of Wisconsin.

As I tapped the point on my pencils to make sure they were neither too dull nor too sharp, a man in a crew-cut and bowtie came up beside me, kneeled down and whispered so as not to disturb the others: “You don't belong here, son.” I had just finished reading
The Trial
on flight to Madison, and my first reaction to this bizarre comment about not belonging was to believe him. The second was to mumble to myself the mesmerizing opening sentence from my green Modern Library edition of Kafka's novel: “Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.”

I was too nervous to speak. Finally, he planted himself beside me, refusing to go away. I clutched the yellow pencils tightly, which now mocked my abortive independence. I had been admitted, hadn't I? I had the letter of acceptance to the College of Integrated Liberal Studies in my pocket; I was about to take placement tests like any other freshman. Maybe I was in the wrong room. I got up slowly to check the room number.

“Isn't this Room 167, sir?”

“I don't think you understand,” he continued gently. “You're not enrolled at all.”

Trembling, I pulled out a letter. “Look at the date,” he said. Then he told
me that my mother had phoned, demanding my enrollment be rescinded, and the deposit refunded.

“She said you're going to Hofstra, I think.”

I felt my throat constrict, and the glands in my neck go all hot and sweaty.

“Why don't we go out into the hall?” the bow-tied man said.

The hallway was dark wood, and from the ground floor I glanced up and saw an intricate staircase. But I would never be allowed to climb those stairs. I was going back to New York. I couldn't talk. I needed to run. I saw two giggling girls with hair the color of Wisconsin cheddar; they were laughing, and of course I knew they were laughing at me. I thought of my humiliation on the very first day of second grade when, embarrassed about raising my hand to ask to go to the bathroom, I went in my pants, and the whole class learned about my disgrace as Miss Hunt personally escorted me to the little boy's room. I walked away from the man in the bowtie with as much dignity as I could summon.

Once I separated myself from him, I bolted down the hallway and vomited all over the white and black tile of the bathroom floor. Bascom Hall was the central administration building and housed the Chancellor's office. It had huge white columns outside, and I wondered if the chancellor himself could hear me retching from his office. I hadn't vomited like that since I was five, and I'd completely forgotten how awful and embarrassing it was: the sounds, the sour taste, the half-digested food, the smell! I felt I should apologize to someone. But there was no one to apologize to, so I got down on my knees and cleaned up the mess with paper towels. Then I knelt down in a different corner of the bathroom, and pressed my forehead against the cold tiles.

I took a sip of water from the fountain outside the Chancellor's office, and recovered a bit. I walked back to the Wisconsin Inn where my father was waiting. Here for the express purpose of being on my own, as soon as I arrived, I had thrown up and run to my father. I hadn't felt this helpless since my bar mitzvah. I knew I would encounter either anger or mockery, possibly both, as I approached our room at the end of the corridor. How could I confess that I had not taken the placement exams?

I knocked softly, and waited for him to answer the door although I had
a spare key in my pocket. The television was on and he had been watching football with a tall Bloody Mary in his hand, a stalk of celery peering over the top of the glass. I said nothing.

“Just sit down and tell me what happened,” he said calmly.

“But—but—but,” I stammered.

“Listen, you have to remain calm, Henry; just breathe. I can't do anything until you've let me in on what has happened.” He didn't mention my tears, the disheveled state of my clothes, or the vomit stains and smells on my clothes.

“All right, what happened?” He had a way of astonishing me. Just when I thought I had figured him out, he turned into someone else. When I felt confident, he treated me like dirt; when I had nothing, he was compassionate. I couldn't understand it, but I was grateful. I stopped sniveling and kissed him. He offered me his fragrant cheek, and held me briefly in his arms as I told him.

“Sonofabitch! Goddamnsonofabitch Lerner bastard!” I felt much better at the sound of those comforting words.

What happened was this: while my father and I were flying from New York to Madison, my mother phoned and canceled my registration. She'd planned for me to attend Columbia all along. When she accepted that I couldn't get into Columbia on my own, she had made a deal for me to go to Hofstra for the fall semester, prove myself with good grades, and transfer to Columbia after Christmas. It was as good as official. I had been accepted and enrolled, without being informed, at Hofstra, a school to which I hadn't even applied.

When the Registrar called and told her about freshman pre-orientation, my mother insisted there had been a mistake. She had legal custody of me, she said, and I was going to Hofstra. She was very, very sorry about the inconvenience. She could be polite and charming when the occasion demanded it, and maintained that I would not be attending Wisconsin.

My registration was rescinded.

My father demanded to see the Dean while I lingered nervously outside his office biting my nails. He and my mother were divorcing, he said. It was really my mother who was mistaken. After all, here I was, ready to begin my freshman year and take whatever damn placement tests they wanted. He yanked me in from where I was waiting, and asked if I wanted to be here in
Wisconsin. Right on cue I nodded. Did the university require a check to cover the inconvenience? He took out his checkbook and said he would be glad to cover the costs. No, but since they had returned my tuition deposit, would he mind writing a new check out for that same amount? Of course not. As he wrote the check, I noticed the gleaming diamond pinkie ring on his left finger, his elegantly manicured and polished nails, and his gleaming signature signed with the Mont Blanc fountain pen he used only on special occasions. “Well,” the Dean said, “we're so sorry about all the inconvenience. We'll get him back into the same dorm, and it will be like nothing ever happened.”

“Like nothing ever happened.”

Those words were from a fairy tale. I looked up at my father and he smiled down at me. We're in this damn thing together, his look said.

I'll never forget that day. It was one of those moments where a common foe led to intimacy and reconciliation. He never alluded to my throwing up or crying. In fact, he never mentioned it again. Even at his irrational worst, he never used my past failures against me. Never. Somewhere deep down, he was decent, I argued to myself. Somewhere, deep down, he cared.

Reflecting on this episode now makes me want to call him in the hospital and remind him of that time in Madison, how much it meant that he stood by me. But might he not remember the episode very differently? Somehow, I can imagine our conversation drifting from my gratitude into some fault: my ignorance about finances or the improper way I raise my children. This has all happened before. So I don't call. Instead, I think of a passage I recently jotted down from Montaigne: “We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.”

Instead of phoning him, I close my eyes. I imagine myself walking along Jan van Goyenkade, the street in Leiden where we live. I look on the seventeenth-century red brick buildings, sleeping houseboats, and peaceful canals which line our house—all of which might have been painted by Vermeer. I see myself cycling along the Witte Singel, past the bust of Rembrandt van
Rijn, Leiden's most famous citizen. Most of all, I remember that my children are safe at home, growing up in a culture so different from the one I knew. I know they are safe. More than that, they are far from New York.