The Poison Tree (5 page)

“It has to be here somewhere, so be patient, young man.”

“I will, Grandma.” While I waited, I metamorphosed from Mantle into Bob Cousy in his black, high-topped sneakers, dribbling once behind my back before banking a lay-up off the top of the hall closet. Somehow the ball rolled off the rim and came back out, but fortunately, Bill Russell was waiting for the rebound. He grabbed Cousy's miss and stuffed it in over Wilt the Stilt for a basket.

Grandma rustled through what sounded like a thick forest of dresses. Her voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away.

“It's in this box … no, it isn't. Wait! I've got it!”

She emerged with something in her hand: an old framed photograph of a boy feeding a squirrel on a wooden perch. The boy had dark hair, a round face, and a friendly smile. I had seen this photo twice before. Grandma must have forgotten.

“Ups-a-daisy,” she said, pulling me onto her lap.

“I'm too old for that, Grandma.”

“Suit yourself, smarty-pants. Do you know what this is?” Of course, I knew what I was supposed to say, but I didn't want to, so I quickly grabbed an imaginary bat.

“An old picture.”

“Of course it's an old picture, but what is it a picture of?”

“A boy and a squirrel.”

“Correct, Mr. Einstein. But who's the boy?”

“I don't know.”

“It's your father. It's your father when he was just your age.”

As if I cared. I creamed a Pedro Gomez fastball out beyond the Yankee Stadium Monuments in deep center field, 456 feet away. Jimmy Piersall went way back, but Mel Allen, the Yankee announcer, shouted, “That ball is going, going … it is
gone
!” The crowd went absolutely nuts. I watched the flight of the ball, and, realizing it was a home run, began my slow trot around Grandma's room, almost knocking over a lamp.

“Stop that!” she snapped. “The child can't stand still. And he's still biting his nails—disgusting!” She sounded exhausted. As I trotted past third base, she reached out a hand and grabbed my arm, arresting my stride. “Now look at me. When your father was a little boy, just your age, he found a baby
squirrel under a tree in Central Park—pay attention; have I told you this before? We knew it wouldn't live, your grandfather and me. But your father, he brought that squirrel home and begged us to let him keep it. Now your grandfather was very strict in those days (he still is, in some ways), and he said the squirrel was an unsanitary thing, a rodent. But your father begged and cried and pleaded, until in the end, he was allowed to keep it for a few weeks. And you know what?” Her voice dropped: fierce, intense. “Your father nursed that helpless squirrel back to health. He fed it milk every day with a little eyedropper. See his expression there in the picture, smiling?” I nodded. “Good. That's your father. And one month to the day after he found it, that squirrel was healthy enough to take back to Central Park and be released. Now, what about that?”

“That's a good story,” I said. She let my arm go, and I lashed a single to left. I was now batting right handed, where Mickey had less power, but hit for a higher average.

“It's not a story. It's the truth, the truth about your father. So don't ever say anything bad about him, because he isn't bad.”

“But he hits me.” I didn't look at her as I said this, but I knew exactly how she looked, and that she'd shaken her head once, firmly.

“I won't hear that. If he does things that seem bad, it's because she doesn't make him feel like a man. You're too young to understand such things. He comes home to that filthy apartment, awful food. Don't think I don't know what it's like up there; I do. No man would put up with that. A man needs to have a warm meal on the table when he comes home from a hard day at the office. Your father works hard, you know that. Did you hear me? I said, do you know that?”

“I know that.”

“Good. I know you do. You're a good boy. But a child should never say anything bad about his father. Remember the Ten Commandments? Honor thy—”

“I know the Commandments by heart. I memorized them on Saturday at Rodeph Sholem.” There was something thick and heavy in my throat, but I forced myself to prattle on around it.

“Really?”

“Yes. They made us learn five of them, but then Mr. Brilliant got sick and
had a nervous breakdown, so we got a new teacher who forgot to make us learn the rest. But I memorized all ten anyway.”

“Well, that's good. Now give me a kiss.”

Reluctantly, I kissed Grandma, but as I pulled away, the pressure in my chest broke, and I started crying.

“But he is bad. He is! I hate him!”

For a second she hesitated. Then she said, “Don't you say that! Don't you ever say that! What did I just tell you?”

“A stupid story about a stupid squirrel.”

“No! Not about a squirrel, about your father. How he rescued that squirrel and fed it milk every day with an eyedropper. Didn't you hear a thing I said, or were you too busy swinging that stupid imaginary blue baseball bat?”

“How do you know it's blue, Grandma?” I tried to get her to stop talking about my father.

“Uh, I don't know. You must have told me, or something. Anyway, don't change the subject. I asked if you heard what I was saying.”

“I heard.”

“Well, if you
really
heard, you wouldn't say things like you hated your father, would you? Bad men don't rescue defenseless little squirrels, do they? Well, do they?”

“I guess not.”

“You guess not?”

“They don't.”

“So, it's all settled now, isn't it? Well, isn't it?”

When she wasn't looking, I gouged a thin piece of wood out of the cedar closet door and jammed the splinter into my thumb.

It is late afternoon before I turn and go back to his apartment. Whenever I touch something that belongs to my father, however insignificant, I make certain to return it to its proper place. I feel like a detective. I imagine I've come to “case the joint,” solve a crime. Then it occurs to me—that's not who I am at all. I'm not Hercule Poirot; I'm the thief. At least that would explain why I'm sweating, snooping, trying things on, tracing my finger along the black lacquer finish of his thick Mont Blanc fountain pen, compulsively unscrewing and screwing on the cap, resting a sterling silver ashtray in my palm, feeling its impressive heft. What is it I am looking for? It's like I'm trying to crack a code of some kind, trying to answer a question. It feels too late in the day for that. At my age, you're supposed to know these things.

Despite my knowledge that I'm alone, I keep looking up, expecting him to burst in at any moment and tell me to put his goddamn things down. I feel I should wipe my fingerprints off everything I've touched. I feel that this is absolutely forbidden, a violation of some unwritten, unspoken law. I remember suddenly what it was I came to find: an address book. Then I see something interesting, a single 8x10 photograph, and I am again distracted from my quest.

In the picture, my parents, dressed in their wedding finery, are walking down the aisle on their way out of the ceremony. Young and innocent, they are perfectly framed by candles, decorative candelabra, and gorgeous bouquets. My mother's hand rests gently on top of my father's, but his hand seems barely to tolerate hers. His dark brown eyes (so different from my own blue ones) bore straight ahead at the photographer, looking right through him. My father is remarkably young and handsome with surprisingly delicate
features, graceful hands, and arched eyebrows. But there is something disturbing, possibly cruel, in the eyes, the tight, unsmiling mouth, and the sleek, black hair combed straight back. My mother, on the other hand, is rapturous. Her face is round; she has not yet had her nose fixed, or begun to bleach her dark hair platinum blonde. The shape of her face still looks just a bit like Gramps' and Uncle Lee's; it won't when those cosmetic alterations are made. Radiant in her white satin wedding dress with its enormous train, and elaborate, turned-back veil, my mother carries a huge wedding bouquet. She is not looking at my father. She is smiling vacantly at someone in a pew just off the edge of the photo to her left. This couple looks lovely, but I can't help thinking that despite appearances, they have already begun moving—literally, as well as figuratively—past one another. Or rather, it is clear that my father's forward motion does not include his young bride.

Although she might seem flighty, my mother is highly educated; she began her undergraduate degree at Cornell, and finished at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her M.A.T. at Columbia University's Teacher's College while pregnant with me. There she studied with some of Columbia's great luminaries, in particular Lionel Trilling and Joseph Wood Krutch, with whom she studied Shakespeare and the classics. Shakespeare was quoted regularly in our house, and references to his work were sprinkled throughout her conversation, particularly in later years as she became filled with remorse for the blows that she had been given by life.

Two nights before my tenth birthday, a noise wakes me from a sound sleep. I hear the front door being unlocked, and a few moments afterwards I hear screams and a thump. Moments after that, a tiny sliver of light slithers across my face like a worm. The light tickles and I almost sneeze, but manage to keep my eyes closed and pretend to sleep—I instinctively know this is not a good time to be awake. I am pretty used to my parents' fighting, and usually just block things out. I have my own peculiar ritual of getting myself to sleep when I am frightened: I recite every member of the New York Yankees' twenty-five-man opening day roster, by number and position. If that doesn't work, I remind myself of the players' heights
and weights, which I have memorized from the back of their baseball cards:

Mickey Charles Mantle, No. 7, Center Field; Born October 20, 1931, Spavinaw, Oklahoma—5'11”—198 lbs.

Lawrence Peter (“Yogi”) Berra, No. 8, Catcher: Born May 12, 1925, St. Louis, Missouri—5'8”—194 lbs.

William Joseph (“Moose”) Skowron, Jr., No. 14, First Base: Born December 18, 1930, Chicago, Illinois—5'11”—200 lbs.

And so on.

The players' numbers bore a special significance, just as their individual batting stances did. Number 8 was more than a numeral draped across Yogi's stooped, broad back, making him look like Quasimodo carrying his beloved Esmeralda across the rooftops of Paris in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
. No, those uniform numbers were the simple bedrocks of existence for me. They represented the curtain that I pulled down to block out the strange, terrifying reality around me.

If my mumbled recitation of the Yankees failed, I listened to “Cousin” Bruce Morrow on the transistor radio hidden under my pillow. These were the tricks I used to dampen the animal sounds and screams that, at odd intervals, invaded my sleep from my parents' bedroom down the long, thin hallway. But on this night nothing worked; I was excited about my birthday, and worried about the screams. So when my other tricks failed, I threw the covers off. I heard something like sobbing down the hall, and got up and followed the sobs like the breadcrumbs in “Hansel and Gretel.” My brother, Bobby, slept through everything; he cradled a toy Cadillac in his arms like a baby. As I stole down the hallway, I saw my father in his familiar green bathrobe with a towel draped over one of his shoulders like a prizefighter, holding our silver ice bucket in his arms. I recognized the ice bucket right away, since it was something I was warned not to play with. It was a silver wedding gift to my parents from Tiffany's. It was also just the right size to catch a pair of balled-up white sweat socks lobbed from the dining room. I taught Bobby how to lob socks with just the right amount of arc, like I did, or to bank them off the wall. But his efforts were feeble, even allowing for his age. He was a spazz. I knew it was inevitable that he would get picked for right field if I didn't straighten him out fast. My theory was that boys who couldn't throw properly were destined to fail. My ambition was to get to the point where we
could play catch without him utterly humiliating himself. It never happened. He was oblivious to his glaring inadequacy; he apparently thought baseball was just a game. I knew better—it was life itself.

Beside my father, there was another man who was short and stocky with black, shiny shoes and squeaky soles. He was wearing a policeman's uniform. Both men disappeared into my parents' bedroom, and then I heard more whimpering. It sounded like a child, or a dog, but I knew it wasn't either one. Then it stopped and sounded exactly like a baby who's been crying so long he can't catch his breath.

The sight of the uniform terrified me, and I wanted to yell, “What's going on around here?” But I couldn't make a sound. So I crept back to my bedroom. My brother was still asleep, still caressing the Cadillac, but it was a long time before my ears stopped straining to hear each pitiful noise from beyond my parents' door.

The next morning was my birthday, and I woke up to the smell of Joy, Mom's perfume. I still smell it today, though now, it makes me sick. I loved it then, and loved how that morning she entered the room brushing right by Bobby's bed, carrying a birthday tray just for me. She balanced the tray carefully, resting it on his bed, before hugging and kissing me. Usually, I pretended to ignore such shows of affection; not today. The tray had scrambled eggs, hot buttered toast, and a cup of cocoa with seven miniature marshmallows floating on top. My mother winked at me as if to say, “Get it?” and I started laughing. Seven was Mickey Mantle's number, of course, and she had arranged the marshmallows in the shape of a seven, just for me. The number was still recognizable despite her walk from the kitchen to my room.

“Happy Birthday, sweetheart! Time to get ready. Doc has the alley all reserved for you.” Doc's was the name of the bowling alley.