Next I have to decide whether or not to line the seat. It isn’t a matter of hygiene, I’m sure the place is clean, spotless in its own particular antiseptic goy way: the question is, what if it’s warm yet from a Campbell behind—from her mother! Mary! Mother also of Jesus Christ! If only for the sake of my family, maybe I should put a little paper around the rim; it doesn’t cost anything, and who will ever know?
I will! I will! So down I go—and it is warm! Yi, seventeen years old and I am rubbing asses with the enemy! How far I have traveled since September! By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion! And yea is right! On the can I am besieged by doubt and regret, I am suddenly languishing with all my heart for home . . . When my father drives out to buy “real apple cider” at the roadside farmer’s market off in Union, I won’t be with him! And how can Hannah and Morty go to the Weequahic-Hillside game Thanks–giving morning without me along to make them laugh? Jesus, I hope we win (which is to say, lose by less than 21 points). Beat Hillside, you bastards! Double U, Double E, Q U A, H I C! Bernie, Sidney, Leon, “Ushie,” come on, backfield, FIGHT!
Aye-aye ki-ike-us,
Nobody likes us,
We are the boys of Weequahic High—
Aye-aye ki-ucch-us,
Kish mir in tuchis,
We are the boys of Weequahic High!
Come on—hold that line, make that point, kick ’em in the kishkas, go team go!
See, I’m missing my chance to be clever and quick-witted in the stands! To show off my sarcastic and mocking tongue! And after the game, missing the historical Thanksgiving meal prepared by my mother, that freckled and red-headed descendant of Polish Jews! Oh, how the blood will flow out of their faces, what a deathly silence will prevail, when she holds up the huge drumstick, and cries, “Here! For guess who!” and Guess-who is found to be AWOL! Why have I deserted my family? Maybe around the table we don’t look like a painting by Norman Rockwell, but we have a good time, too, don’t you worry! We don’t go back to the Plymouth Rock) no Indian ever brought maize to any member of our family as far as we know—but just smell that stuffing! And look, cylinders of cranberry sauce at either end of the table! And the turkey’s name, “Tom”! Why then can’t I believe I am eating my dinner in America, that America is where I am, instead of some other place to which I will one day travel, as my father and I must travel every November out to that hayseed and his wife in Union, New Jersey (the two of them in overalls), for real Thanksgiving apple cider.
“I’m going to Iowa,” I tell them from the phone booth on my floor. “To where?” “To Davenport, Iowa.” “On your first college vacation?!” “—I know, but it’s a great opportunity, and I can’t turn it down—” “Opportunity? To do what?” “Yes, to spend Thanksgiving with this boy named Bill Campbell’s family—” “Who?” “Campbell. Like the soup. He lives in my dorm—” But they are expecting me. Everybody is expecting me. Morty has the tickets to the game. What am I talking opportunity? “And who is this boy all of a sudden, Campbell?” “My friend! Bill!” “But;” says my father, “the cider” Oh my God, it’s happened, what I swore I wouldn’t permit!—I am in tears, and “cider” is the little word that does it. The man is a natural—he could go on Groucho Marx and win a fortune guessing the secret-woid. He guesses mine, every single time! And wins my jackpot of contrition! “I can’t back out, I’m sorry, I’ve accepted—we’re going!” “Going? And how, Alex—I don’t understand this plan at all,” interrupts my mother—“how are you going, if I may be so bold, and where? and in a convertible too, that too—” “NO!” “And if the highways are icy, Alex—” “We’re going. Mother, in a Sherman tank! Okay? Okay?” “Alex,” she says sternly, “I hear it in your voice, I know you’re not telling me the whole truth, you’re going to hitchhike in a convertible or some other crazy thing—two months away from home, seventeen years old, and he’s going wild!”
Sixteen years ago I made that phone call. A little more than half the age I am now. November 1950—here, it’s tattooed on my wrist, the date of my Emancipation Proclamation. Children unborn when I first telephoned my parents to say I wasn’t coming home from college are just entering college, I suppose—only I’m still telephoning my parents to say I’m not coming home! Fighting off my family, still! What use to skip those two grades in grammar school and get such a jump on everybody else, when the result is to wind up so far behind? My early promise is legend: starring in all those grade-school plays! taking on at the age of twelve the entire DAR! Why then do I live by myself and have no children of my own? It’s no non sequitur, that question! Professionally I’m going somewhere, granted, but privately—what have I got to show for myself? Children should be playing on this earth who look like me! Why not? Why should every shtunk with a picture window and a carport have offspring, and not me? It don’t make sense! Think of it, half the race is over, and I still stand here at the starting line—me, the first one out of his swaddling clothes and into his track suit! a hundred and fifty-eight points of I.Q., and still arguing with the authorities about the rules and regulations! disputing the course to be run! calling into question the legitimacy of the track commission! Yes, “crab” is correct, Mother!”Sourball” is perfect, right on The Nose’s nose! “Mr. Conniption-Fit”—cest moi!
Another of these words I went through childhood thinking of as “Jewish.” Conniption. “Go ahead, have a conniption-fit,” my mother would advise. “See if it changes anything, my brilliant son.” And how I tried! How I used to hurl myself against the walls of her kitchen! Mr. Hot-Under-The Collar! Mr. Hit-The-Ceiling! Mr. Fly-Off-The-Handle! The names I earn for myself! God forbid somebody should look at you cockeyed, Alex, their life isn’t worth two cents! Mr. Always-Right-And-Never-Wrong! Grumpy From The Seven Dwarfs Is Visiting Us, Daddy. Ah, Hannah, Your Brother Surly Has Honored Us With His Presence This Evening, It’s A Pleasure To Have You, Surly. “Hi Ho Silver,” she sighs, as I rush into my bedroom to sink my fangs into the bedspread, “The Temper Tantrum Kid Rides Again.”
Near the end of our junior year Kay missed a period, and so we began, and with a certain eager delight—and wholly without panic, interestingly—to make plans to be married. We would offer ourselves as resident baby-sitters to a young faculty couple who were fond of us; in return they would give us their roomy attic to live in, and a shelf to use in their refrigerator. We would wear old clothes and eat spaghetti. Kay would write poetry about having a baby, and, she said, type term papers for extra money. We had our scholarships, what more did we need? ( besides a mattress, some bricks and boards for bookshelves, Kay’s Dylan Thomas record, and in time, a crib). We thought of ourselves as adventurers.
I said, “And you’ll convert, right?”
I intended the question to be received as ironic, or thought I had. But Kay took it seriously. Not solemnly, mind you, just seriously.
Kay Campbell, Davenport, Iowa: “Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
Great girl! Marvelous, ingenuous, candid girl! Content, you see, as she was! What one dies for in a woman—I now realize! Why would I want to do a thing like that? And nothing blunt or defensive or arch or superior in her tone. Just common sense, plainly spoken.
Only it put our Portnoy into a rage, incensed The Temper Tantrum Kid. What do you mean why would you want to do a thing like that? Why do you think, you simpleton-goi! Go talk to your dog, ask him. Ask Spot what he thinks, that four-legged genius. “Want Kay-Kay to be a Jew, Spottie—hub, big fella, hub?” Just what the fuck makes you so self-satisfied, anyway? That you carry on conversations with dogs? that you know an elm when you see one? that your father drives a station wagon made out of wood? What’s your hotsy-totsy accomplishment in life, aby, that Doris Day snout?