“Have a coffee.”
“I’ll have what he’s having.”
“Lemonade,” Paige said. “It’s in the fridge. In a pitcher. I have to get some starch. I’ll be right back.”
“I should go,” I said.
“I won’t be a minute.”
“Don’t go,” Vic said at the refrigerator, pouring himself a glass of lemonade.
Then Paige was out the door and up the stairs.
I sat down. Vic sat in the chair next to me, but only breathed, sighed, didn’t say anything. A sound came from my throat — a nervous noise, a whicker of anxiety, Heh-heh.
“Heh-heh,” Vic said, the exact sound, and he stared at me. His face was mean and misshapen, with full lips. He was hunched forward in the chair, looking fatter, and I could hear his breathing, like gas escaping. He said, “I know who you are. You’re Eddie.”
“No. I’m not Eddie.” My voice was high and terrified, and the way I said it seemed to convince him that I was lying.
To calm myself, or maybe to show him I was calm, I raised my glass to my mouth, As I began to drink, he leaned over and punched me in the side of my face, cracking the edge of the glass against my teeth and jarring my head. I drunkenly set the glass on a side table and tasted blood and moved unsteadily to the stairs, just as Paige came down.
“I have to go.”
“What did you do?” she said angrily to Vic, but she knew.
“You heard him. He has to go.”
I hurried away, blind, stumbling downhill. I was so stunned by being hit in the face I could not think, and my head was ringing, my jaw hurt, and yet I felt glad to be away, and happy when I saw I was not being chased. My mouth was full of foul-tasting saliva but I did not spit until I got to the bottom of the hill, and then I bent over and spat blood. I had a tenderness on my tongue where my teeth, or the glass, had been forced against it by his punching me.
Passing a pizza parlor, I saw my reflection in the window and was surprised to see myself as normaclass="underline" no one would have guessed I’d been hit in the face. But I looked so young, so pale, with spiky hair and a rumpled shirt.
That was how I looked. Inside I was sick, and the wound in my mouth, the taste of blood, made me afraid. I ran, feeling skinny and breathless, to North Station, pushed my token into the slot, and hurried onto the train.
It was at Sullivan Square, as the train drew in, that I remembered the shoes. I’d left them at Paige’s apartment when I’d run, after Vic hit me. And I’d been so afraid I hadn’t thought of them until now. On the electric car I tried to think of an excuse. The truth was awful, impossible, unrepeatable.
As soon as my father saw me entering the store, he said, “Shoes?” in his economical way, not wasting words on me. But it struck me that he was his other self, the one the woman had described, the good guy. He seemed, as I thought this, that he was summing me up too.
“I lost them. I was on the train and looked down and they weren’t there.”
“What else?”—meaning, And what other things happened to you?
“Nothing.”
He lifted my chin. The wound in my mouth hurt from his tugging my head. He leaned over and, sniffing my hair, he knew everything.
“Sure.”
Long Story Short
I was born in Berlin in 1937. My mother was eighteen. She hid me from everyone for a year and a half. My father must have been someone who was hated, a Jew or a Gypsy: I never knew who he was. My mother got permission to emigrate in 1943 under “refugee status” and married a man named Wolfie. We sailed to Australia. None of us spoke English. We were put in a rural refugee camp, living in dormitories. After a year, we were sent to a suburb of Melbourne, where we were happy, but six months later my mother and Wolfie crashed their car. Mother was killed, Wolfie was so badly injured he could not care for me.
When the authorities came to put me in the orphanage, the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Dugger, said, “We could easily take him. He’s one of the family. Fritz is no bludger.” My name was Fred, but, being German, I was Fritz to everyone in Australia.
Mrs. Dugger didn’t insist. She watched me get into the car. Then she reached through the window and patted me on the head. She said in a strange tone, “Bye, Fritz. Mind how you go.”
I was put into the Fraser Boys’ Home. I was happy there, oddly enough. The bigger boys protected me. And I was terrified when, after three years, Wolfie showed up, limping from his injuries, to take me away. He arranged for us to go back to Germany. We went by ship. He was abusive for the whole voyage. I had no idea why he wanted me to go with him; I still don’t know. He abandoned me soon after we got to Hamburg. I was taken in by an old woman, and for the first time in my life I was held in the arms of someone who loved me. We both sobbed — the tears were endless. I was still young, but Germany was rebuilding, and I got a job in a restaurant. When I had saved some money, I went to hotel school. I worked in hotels, I became a manager, and eventually I became head of the company, a large hotel chain.
Long story short, our company was negotiating to buy a hotel in Melbourne. Forty years after I left that city, I returned. On my day off I went to the old neighborhood. I found Mrs. Dugger. She was blind, sitting on her porch.
“I used to live here,” I said. “Long ago.”
The moment she heard my voice, she began to cry and said, “Fritz is back!”
She died soon after that. Her son told me that she talked about me constantly, and it was only when I came back and she knew I was all right that she was able to let go. All those years of remorse for letting me be taken away by the authorities.
I have had an unusual life so far, difficult in many ways, but not so difficult as that of my father, who is sixty-something. He was my tormentor for almost the whole of my childhood.
I had a bad case of measles at the age of four. I had developed normally before then, but after the measles I became disobedient and willful. I didn’t listen. I didn’t pay attention. I defied my father, who was a stern disciplinarian — Marine Corps, two tours in Vietnam. “Listen to me!” But I didn’t. He spanked me, sometimes so hard I could still feel it days later. He smacked my hands, twisted my ears, pushed me into a corner, and forced me to stand. He made me call him “Sir.” As I grew older, the punishments became more severe. The worst one was having to kneel on a broomstick. I did this for hours at a time. I was seven or eight years old, and it went on for years. I was rude, I was defiant, you name it — so my dad said. I was a wreck, but I couldn’t cure myself of being an obstinate child. I was also terrible at school, where the punishments weren’t as bad as my father’s, but when he saw my report card he went ballistic.
When I was about thirteen, I was given an eye test at school. Everyone got one. I failed. The eye doctor gave me a prescription for glasses and also suggested that I get a hearing test. This hearing test was given to me many times over a lot of weeks. Some of the tests were administered by groups of doctors or with medical students watching. Sometimes they asked, “How’d you get all those bruises?” I said, “Fell down.”
The results showed that I was extremely deaf, as a result of the measles. I was fitted with two hearing aids. My whole life changed, though I was still pretty rebellious. The other kids laughed at my “earphones.” I improved at school, but my home life deteriorated.
My father became desolate and filled with guilt. Some days when I stop by, I think he is on the verge of suicide, and it takes all the energy I have to reassure him and coax him into better humor, which is a pretty big burden for both of us. He still apologizes. I say, “How were you to know?”