His oldest brother seemed to set the standard for the rest of the children. He was very political and social conscious, the rest of them became that way. He listened to classical music, they all listened to nothing but classical music. He married out of his religion, so did the others who got married. He became a sculptor, the rest of them ended up in various creative and artistic fields, though his parents had wanted them all to be doctors, lawyers, dentists, university professors. His father once said to Irv when the whole family got together for a Thanksgiving Day dinner “I blame you alone for ruining your brothers and sister. They’ll all wind up making peanuts and being Mr. and Mrs. Nice Guys to the detriment of themselves and their pocketbooks, just like you.”
His daughter knocked on their bedroom door, said “Mommy, I can’t sleep.” “Tell her she has to sleep in her own room tonight,” he said. His wife said “Maybe she’s not feeling well — let’s find out first. All right, Carole, come in.” She came in, crawled in bed with them on his wife’s side. “Can I sleep between you and dad?” “No,” he said. One of his great pleasures in life was holding his wife while he slept, the two of them on their sides, his genitals pressed into her buttocks and his hand holding her breast or thigh.
During a biology practicum at college his professor came up behind him and said “What do you have in your hand?” “My pencil,” Don said. “Your left hand.” “Nothing.” “Then please open it?” “Why should I?” “Because I think you have something in that hand other than sweat and air.” The whole class watched them. “Go back to the practicum,” the teacher said. “How can they?” Don said. “Then open your hand so they can go back, as they’ve only ten minutes left to this part of the exam.” “Oh, the hell with it,” and he threw the crib notes into the air. They came down on top of the teacher and Don’s lab table. “Get out of this room!” “Save your breath,” Don said, “I’m already gone,”
Their first cat jumped out of their apartment window five stories up and, after two days at the vet’s, had to be put to sleep. His wife and daughter and he made the decision in the vet’s office and that was the first time they all cried together. Only other time was when he slapped his wife in the face. She cried, then their daughter came into the room and cried, then he cried and said he was sorry to both of them. “Not to me — only to mommy,” their daughter said. “Okay, I’m only sorry to mommy, but also to you for slapping your mommy, though thank God I didn’t do it in front of you, and I swear it won’t happen again,” “It does and I’m leaving you for good,” his wife said and she and their daughter started to cry again and he just stared stupefyingly at his wife. She’d never said anything like that to him before.
His sister got a rare form of cancer when she was nineteen and suffered horribly for a year before she died. The entire family stood around her bed in the hospital and watched her pass away, while the nurse and aide tried to get them out of the room. Every time they got two of them out of the room and came back to get the others, the two who’d left came back. Finally the doctor came in and said “All right, though it’s against hospital policy, let the young woman succumb in front of her family — we’re outnumbered and they seem decided,” His parents and brothers and he were advised to go for checkups and body scannings twice a year after that for the rest of their lives, since the disease she died of was supposed to be hereditary, even if no one on either side of the family for three generations back had had it. The first woman he asked to marry refused him because she said their children might get his family’s hereditary disease. “I’m sorry but with your luck it’s almost bound to hit you or one of our children, which I just don’t have the guts to take.”
He couldn’t make himself verbally understood to any adults till he was four and a half. He talked an almost incomprehensible baby talk that only his brothers understood, and they translated it to his parents and other people for him. His pediatrician used to make fun of him when he was brought to his office. He’d say “Donny bonny, still can’t say a word but mmm mmm dadda momma poo-poo too?” He told his parents that mimicking their son would ultimately shame him into talking complete coherent sentences. Then on one visit, his mother said, Don spoke his first recognizable sentence to an adult. The doctor spoke baby talk to him again and Don said to him “Doctor Brandon, I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
Only one teacher in his entire education ever showed any affection for him. It was in the fifth grade. She’d put him on her lap in front of the class whenever the students had been disruptive, and say “This is the nicest, quietest, gentlest and politest student in the class, and that goes as well for the girls. Why can’t you all be like him?” It embarrassed him but he enjoyed it and she gave him the highest grades he ever got at any school.
His mother enrolled him at ballet school when he was nine to improve his physical coordination. He liked ballet but stopped taking it because his friends said it was only for sissies, and resumed classes when he was twelve and had moved to a different neighborhood. His ballet teacher then said it was too late for him to take it seriously, so suggested he shouldn’t take it at all. He quit and got interested again four years later when he was going out with a girl who was studying ballet. He got so good at it that he switched to a city high school that concentrated on the performing arts, and got a chorus job in a Washington ballet company when he was eighteen. He was considered a promising soloist with a New York company at the age of twenty-one when he broke an ankle crossing a street. He leaped out of the way of a bicycle going in the wrong direction and fell over the pedestrian next to him. His ankle never healed right and he had to stop dancing professionally. He tried choreography, wasn’t very good at it, went to college to eventually become a dentist, flunked most of his predent courses, switched to a degree in political science and became a social studies teacher in junior high school, which he does today. He got a master’s in education and has failed the assistant principal’s test twice. He still limps a little from the street accident and occasionally does a few positions, jetés or parts of dances he danced on the stage or choreographed, for his children or when he’s by himself. He never dances at social occasions, except for a slow simple fox trot, because most partners and observers expect too much from him on the floor.
His wife said on their fifteenth wedding anniversary “The first five years were the pits, the second got a little better, the last five have been almost brilliant. I can’t explain it, can you?” “No,” he said. “Maybe we’re just slowing down” she said, “or getting used to one another, but those reasons sound like gross clichés. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ve really begun to like one another — oh this is going to sound trivial, the cliché of clichés, but it’s what I feel.” “Say it then,” he said, “because I’d also like to know why.” “It could be our having the children and because you are a good father and provider and you’ve mellowed a lot since I first knew you — maybe all those are it. You let me love you now when before you held back. Cliché? Trite? Even if they are, so what? But I never thought I’d stay with you after the first year and then every year after that for the next four. Then we had Carole and I thought what the heck, I have to stay with him till she’s at least in the first grade. Now she’s in the fifth grade and we have Celia and I’m very much in love with you and you seem to be with me and it’s great together most of the time, as a couple, individuals, and a family — am I talking like a schmuck or what?” “No, you’re right. I hate my work but I love you and the kids. And the sex is still good, isn’t it?” “Better than ever,” she said, “I forgot that. Let’s do it now, in fact. My anniversary present to you, or my morning one.” “Celia might get up and want to have breakfast.” “We’ll say we’re still asleep,” and she got up and locked their door.