“Not
at all..??”
“Nope…..never
have…”
“You
don’t mean that………”
“Yeah
I do…..”
“That
would kill me….”
My
friend Krista refused to accept the fact that I had no determination to find,
meet, or even try to locate my real father.
As I’d go on to explain to her, the structure of my life thus far kind
of defied the need. I had a large
surrounding family, and there were in fact, throughout my formidable years, a significant
few grownup male figures. One of them in
fact held the title of “Father” on my birth certificate. That was Hirsch.
Hirsch
was my mother’s one and only marriage. In her late twenties, in 1959 New York,
the height of the straight-edge Mad Men era, my mother, an attractive
model-worthy figure with cover girl features, the final product of a five-kid
Depression-era Coney Island family was sorely intent upon flipping the bird to society’s
caste system. Rather than ease into a
union with some big, handsome jerk with a power job, a great financial future
and plans to screw, procreate and live in a house in the suburbs, this young
woman with an office job and an apartment rental on Hudson Street in the
Village handed herself over to the fellow who entertained her the most, a forty-year
old odd-job hopper who looked pretty official in a suit, and sought a future as
a standup comedian. In a world of Tom,
Dick and Harrys, my mom chose Hirsch.
Hirsch
was going places with his standup career.
He and his brother Klein, (an abbreviation of some unrecallable Yiddish
name..) shared the spotlight as a team, kind of a “Sunshine Boys’. Their act was a unique one, combining
expressions with human-made sound effects, very Ernie Kovacs for it’s time.
Audiences went crazy for it, and they were a solid opener in clubs. Their friend base was an army of New York
club entertainers and agents, the Broadway Danny Rose cast of it’s time.
They’d all fast become the cast members of my mom’s life in that marriage. The
duplex apartment the couple rented in Brooklyn was host to late-night parties
on Saturday night and uproarious bagel brunches on Sundays. They were also the bonding
factor of the marriage.
Hirsch
and Klein were adopted by a top agent, and were this close to playing the Tonight
show, when it all stopped cold. My mom
found Hirsch sitting in the living room, staring at the TV on rehearsal night. What happened..?
Much
like the tale of The Sunshine Boys, they called it quits. Toward one
another, the brothers were characteristically mute. Now their act was gone. My mother was apoplectic, and fearful. She’d soon learn from her sister-in-law, all
about their true profiles. Think
Jonathan Winters or Robin Williams. And
they were successful versions. These
guys were not victors.
My
mom would respond to the situation by insisting this man, ten years her senior
and mostly unemployable, go back to school and get a teaching license. This had to be easier in 1962 than today,
because by simply attending classes, struggling through math exams, and handing
in ghostwritten term papers for which my mom happily served the ghost role, She
would vicariously win him the license of an English teacher.
From
there, her ensuing Judy Garland-esque struggle with the bottle would begin to
end their domestic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf union. They split, and
the divorce was finalized a few years later, south of the border, hours before
I arrived in a Brooklyn hospital, and not in the traffic-stalled cab ride over.
Mom
had other reasons to cite for their breakup, as she’d begin to share with me as
I matured into my teens. “He couldn’t perform..” was the headline issue. That can probably break up a passionate relationship,
but decades of mulling it over would have me concluding that a woman who was so
uncomfortable with her body, and “good-girl” complexes of the generaton, and
all kinds of other psychological barricades, ending in the need to be well
beyond inebriated for anything to commence, probably had just as much of a role
in the incompatibility.
Not
only did the divorce not end their association.
It strengthened it. One or two
quickly truncated relationships in my own distant past led to some fine,
communicative friendships for awhile, in which I’d categorize our bond as “divorced
ex’s”. It led me to understand what made
my mom and Hirsch such an item.
The
ink hadn’t dried on the divorce form before the two could rejoice and indulge
in an intimate friendship, spending hours either together or over the phone, analyzing
their lives, their friends, or that Bergman movie on Channel 13 the other
night. Their conversations were the
soundtrack of my childhood. Even after
Hirsch’s second ill-fated two-year marriage ended, all through which time he
was on the phone with my mom, they were an intellectual “one”.
But
it was somewhere after the split when my mom, in all her frustration, sought
some kind of vindication, which she did through a series of brief, and mostly rewarding
late 1960s encounters, like that chap Brock who she always talked dreamingly
about. He was reportedly some hunk with
a hip sense of humor, rode a motorcycle, held the image of Michal Parks on Along
Came Bronson, and after a year, rode out of her life tacitly, like Jack
Palance in Shane.
That
booze-fueled night in the Miami motel was, according to urban legend, my ticket
to the mortal universe.
While
some of my relatives would long corroborate entirely with the Legend of Brock, claiming
to have known him, citing him as a wonderful fellow, to me it’s still all urban
legend. If it’s true that he’s my seed,
great. If not, to whom do I appeal..?
Meanwhile,
Hirsch would soon become a prominent and fairly enjoyable figure in the cast of
my childhood. The three of us, he and my
mom would meet up on weekends as I turned nine and ten, after my mom would move
us out of her brother’s home and into our own spare pad. Hirsch, who’d by then
advanced in the TWU game to become an astoundingly high paid NYC English
teacher held a slick, shag-floored pad in the heart of the Village, where we
visited often. Then we’d go back to our
dusty, wood-floored little flat in Forest Hills. I dug my home a whole lot. My mom despised Hirsch for it.
Hirsch
lent his name to the document, and agreeably issued child support, but for
every reason, my mother would hate this man she forever loved.
We’d
meet up around midday Saturday for a day in the city. We’d usually be in upper midtown, for a trip
through the MOMA. She was deeply into
the history and background on the arts.
She’d read plenty about all the artists.
Hirsch knew little but followed her lead. Anyway, he looked and sounded
good.
Hirsch
was this slender rail of a silver-haired fellow, with the standard crop-duster
mustache and aviator-styled, silver-rimmed specs, along with the tweed sport
coat and knit tie. When would I get to look that good..?! My life was all about turtlenecks and pants
that didn’t fit me. I was a ten-year-old
fat kid with no romance in my future.
Sometimes
I’d daydream about what it would be like.
What if that girl I silently crushed on in my fifth-grade class were my girlfriend,
and we shared a fabulous rapport, and went out to the museum exhibit together
one day when we’re grownups..? Would I wear a shirt and tie or a turtleneck with
the tweed jacket..? Would my rat’s nest
of a mullet have shape and style..?
Would I be something I could be proud of and appreciate..? It was kind of up there with wondering if
California would ever slide into the ocean.
Hirsh
would pass in his late fifties. That chain-smoking
he never quit couldn’t have helped, but even in his final days, he lit up.
No,
my mother was not a recipient of any sort upon his departure. They all met in the bedroom of the Village
pad for the reading of the will, bed-bound Hirsch, now feeble, the
centerpiece. I was in the barren living
room, staring at an old episode of I Love Lucy on the Trinitron.
My
mother emerged stunned and horrified.
Betrayed is more like it. For
some reason though, the outcome did not shock me in the least.
In
any event, I never saw the Village pad, Hirsch or Klein ever again. Her closest companions were suddenly her
darkest enemies. Mine too, by command. I
didn’t care. We may have needed that
beneficiary windfall, but what killed her the most was the betrayal. Her lifetime trust in others was now
trash. I got it.
Getting
it though, wouldn’t turn me off the recollections of those fine childhood
meetups with Hirsch in the city. We’d all sachet through midtown like real New
Yorkers, well-dressed and all. We’d hit
the museum exhibit, roam through Brentanoes, and if I was lucky, we’d duck down
into my favorite gallery the Little Old New York concourse at the
McGraw-Hill. They had the big, popular reproduction
Wurlitzer jukebox, with all the 1950s reissues.
The conversations and laughter over my head were the ultimate canopy. I hoped to one day be smart enough, well-read
enough, slender enough to look good in a suit and clever enough, to be that
grownup.
It
was recently, decades after giving up and just getting through the day that I
was stopped in my tracks on the way to work.
It was mid-afternoon, as I dashed past a mirror in a huge display window
in midtown.
I
spotted Hirsch.
In
that Twilight Zone moment, I
stepped back, into the mirror, and gazed at this astounding image, a sharp,
relatively handsome one I’ll admit, of my land-colored bucket hat and my
handlebar mustache, above the tweed sport coat, shirt and tie that I’ve long adopted
in a long-departed Oscar Madison city style. From a distance, unmistakably,
there was Hirsch, features and all.
Right smack in the middle of the land of my childhood sojourns. It was a healthier, more youthful looking
Hirsch. One that looked some years beneath
the Hirsch I knew when he was a few years younger than current me.
The
resemblance led me to the recurring curiosity of just whether or not the
divorced couple ever in fact properly consummated at any time. I’ve long
decided to not care to know. They’re all
gone now, and while I bear none of the accrued financial stability, success,
failure, or life experience that he, my uncle, his son, or any other man of my
origin who’s features I bear, I didn’t mind the sight of that mirror just a few
seconds longer, on the exit ramp to the next birthday. Somehow, the ten-year-old dream
happened. It was a gift worth waiting
for.
Noah F.
