“So? You have to stand up for your family, and this is your family, your wife and your child...” This is just the wind-up, a prepositional phrase, as it were, for a lengthy and major statement which will be delivered with such fervor and eloquence that, right or wrong, I will certainly feel that her position is unassailable and not to be denied.
There is only one chance and that is to head her off at the pass, fire off a few shots, spook the lead animal and turn the stampede in a different direction.
“It’s because he’s my father that you should tell him,” I said. “My emotional involvement, and his, the roles, father and son, parent and child, are permanent you know. They never go away. You can’t unravel them with your parents — in spite of four years of therapy. I’m not criticizing you,” I hasten to add. Though I probably am. Though I couldn’t say what I need to say without saying it. So what do you do with that? It is a huge amount of work to have a conversation with my wife. I’m tired of it. “I’m just saying that if I say it we get involved in a whole to do about the parent-child relationship and lots of emotional shit. If you tell him, you can tell him adult to adult, in fact you will probably assume the dominant role as parent, which you are to David, and since my father is really playing a boy to boy thing with David, that puts you in a superior position.”
“It’s your responsibility,” she says.
“Morally, that’s true. I agree with you a hundred percent.” That’s one of my best tactics with her. It’s very important to her to be right and morally correct. “However, pragmatically, if we want him to stop, he’s more likely to listen to you.”
Her mouth opens. She wants more to come out.
“You’re absolutely correct,” I tell her, before more comes out. “It is my responsibility. But, if I do it, it won’t work. If you do it, it will.”
“Alright,” she says. Disdainful of my ineffectuality — but not unbearably so, this time — she goes back into the living room.
As we go back in we hear David ask, “Why did you steal? Was it because you were hungry and your children were starving?” He has heard that some people steal because they must. This is the legacy of liberalism in our immediate culture and in our house: criminality comes from deprivation. When, and if, it is ever true, I suppose it imparts more than an excuse, a certain legitimacy, even nobility, to theft. ‘I would steal before I would let my family starve.’ Don Corleone morality. However, it is rarely true. The starving tend to just go on and starve and to the degree they steal it is to snatch the bread off the plates of those starving beside them, not by launching daring raids on the manor house on the hill.
“I stole because I wanted to,” my grandfather tells my son.
“Isidore,” my wife says, commandingly.
“One minute,” Izzy says. “You see, I came from a fine family. My grandfather — you see, I had a father and he had a father, I know that you know that but to think about it and see it in your mind, that’s something else. My grandfather was a Rabbi. And he had three sons and one daughter.
“His youngest son was a doctor...”
My wife doesn’t interrupt, even though her command has gone unheeded. Perhaps because this part is alright, this is sort of noble family history, roots, capable of generating lots of sentiment, and she likes that sort of thing.
“That doctor was my father. He was very scientific, very secular and very assimilated. Do you know what assimilated means?”
“Or secular for that matter,” I put in.
“No,” my son says.
“Do you know what a Rabbi is?” my grandfather asks.
“Yes,” my son says. “He’s like a priest. For Jewish people. And I’m part Jewish.”
“Right,” my wife says. She’s the one who’s brought him to temple, though she’s not Jewish at all. I’m totally secular. As was my father. Totally. Even adamantly.
“And assimilated, it means that we became, as much as we could, just like the other people around us. You are completely American. We were as German as Germans could be. We loved Bach and Wagner and read Goethe and respected learning and orderliness. Except...”
“Except what?”
“Except for me,” Grandpop says. “My father had three sons. One became a medical doctor, as he was. One became a professor of chemistry, and the third, became the black sheep of the family.”
“And that was you!” David cries with delight.
“Isidore, would you come into the kitchen. Now.” My wife says.
“What for?”
“I don’t know how you like your tea.”
“A little bit of cream, two sugars,” he says. “Cubes, if you have them. I like sugar cubes.”
“Because I want to talk to you,” she says.
“Alright,” he says, getting up off the floor with even more creaks and sighs than he required to get down there. “There was so much goodness and orderliness around,” he says. “And I had so much sap in me, I just couldn’t stand it.”
“Now, please,” my wife says.
“Is mom going to let Grandpop finish his story?” David asks me as they disappear into the kitchen-conference room.
“I wouldn’t like to bet on it either way,” I say. I’m curious myself, who’s going to win this little to-do.
“Dad, can we go to the video store,” he says.
“Sure.”
“I want to get a movie called To Catch a Thief,” he says. “Have you ever seen it?”
“Yes.”
“Will I like it?”
“Well, if I remember, it’s got a lot of love stuff in it...”
“Yuchey.”
“...but aside from that you should like it.”
They return from the kitchen. My son and I look toward them, searching their faces for clues as to what will ensue. It’s real clear. My father has a slight smile on his face. If you’re in a bad mood it can look like a sneer. I remember it well from growing up. And how it used to infuriate me. My wife, on the other hand, looks pale and chastened. I wonder what he could possibly have said to her. I’ve never achieved that effect. I guess I still have something to learn from the old man.
Isidore lowers himself slowly down to the floor. More creaks, groans, sighs. My wife goes back into the kitchen, hastening, it turns out, to bring him his tea, as he likes it, though not with sugar cubes. We’ve never had them around. I suspect we are about to start stocking them. She also brings a plate of some not very sweet, adult sort of cookies for Grandpop to share with David.
From where I sit the Christmas tree more or less frames them. Strings of light, little wooden sleds and Santas and elves all made cheaply in China hanging from the branches, along with glass balls and an eclectic assortment of thisment and thatment of ornaments assembled over the years. Presents in patterned paper and glittery ribbons are spread out on the floor behind them.
“Christmas was our best season,” Grandpop says. “I had a partner. A young man named Jurgen. This was a very strange time. Germany had its Jew laws, these were laws that were separating out the Jews from the German people. For us, this was very confusing because we saw ourselves as Germans, as Jews hardly at all. But Jurgen and I had become friends before all that and we stayed friends, chasing girls together, you’re too young for that, yes?”
“I like girls,” David says.
“But not like that,” I explain. Though it should not need explanation. “He means he hasn’t reached the age where he won’t play with girls, not that he’s reached the age, which comes after that, where all he wants to do is play with girls.”
“Of course,” Grandpop says. “We liked, what kids nowadays call life in the fast lane. Cash, clothes, cars.” As if suddenly remembering who is in his audience, he adds, with an admonishing finger, a gesture he has surely copied from somewhere because I know it is not innate to him, when he wanted to make a point, a hit, though openhanded and mild, was more his style, “Of course, I would be very unhappy if you were to be that way. You should be more like my brothers. Students. Men of learning. Respected. You understand?”