Read Online Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind by Anne Roiphe - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anne Roiphe
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once stood outside the school doors waiting for her child to run up the steps. From her office phone she arranged his membership in the West Side Soccer Club. She made his dentist appointments and arranged for the babysitter to take him and his older brother to a music class, or a baseball practice or a play date with another boy who would also wear a Spider-Man costume on Halloween. What was missing in this boy that he could not resist the lure of easy money? Or was it something dangerous in the world that had caused the shards of glitter to fall into his heart, causing him to do the illegal thing for the reward of a bauble, an apartment, a suit of armor made of champagne corks, a place in the sun in a gated community that his father or his older brother could never afford and had never wanted.
Mike Wilson took Lourdesâ scarves out of her drawer. He had not touched them since her death. They were long and silk and some had flowers and some had geometric lines, black and white they appeared to be a mathematicianâs dream.
Lourdes, went back to work a year after Ivan was born. She had been in a consciousness-raising group and one after another the woman began to receive paychecks and she was not the first or the last. She had taught calculus in a girlsâ school until March before her death. Her colleagues had come to the funeral and kissed him on the cheek or squeezed his hand and said they would miss her. Yes, yes, he had said, and was relieved when he knew their names.
She wore the scarves in her hair, or she wore them with her black coat. She wore them the way a parrot wears its tail, they just came with her every day. He would give them all to his daughter-in-law. She wouldnât wear them but she would keep them, in honor of Lourdes. He wanted to honor Lourdes. He would give this daughter-in-law the wedding ring, the simple band with a single diamond chip set into the gold. She had her own wedding band but it was time, it was important now to get that wedding band out of his chest of drawers, to move it on to another place. It weighed on him in the drawer.
He would not look at the photograph albums (his married son did not have leather-bound albums, he had online photos on his desktop). He didnât want to see his boys at the beach the summer they rented a mosquito-filled house in Fire Island. He didnât want to see lost teeth and birthday cakes and team trophies. He didnât want to see time slipping away. He especially didnât want to see Ivan, his slightly bucktoothed smile waving to the camera at his brotherâs engagement party. He especially didnât want to see Ivan whom he would never see again. He didnât want to see Ivan who belonged in jail, had been sentenced in absentia to ten years, who had disappeared and forfeited the bail money that had been posted by his girlfriend. He didnât want to think about Ivan at all but a man canât choose his thoughts and Ivan unbidden came again and again.
Iâm haunted, he told Dr. H.
Too bad Iâm not an exorcist, said Dr. H.
You could try, said Mike Wilson.
And what demon was it exactly that had run away with the boy that Ivan had been, citing the stats of every New York Yankee since 1921, unable to eat if his beloved Giants lost a game?
Mike Wilsonâs great-grandfather had danced at the Yom Kippur ball as the nineteenth century was ending. That night he had kissed the seamstress who would become his wife. On a tenement rooftop, under a scratchy wool blanket, the September air still warm, he had sent his genes into a welcoming place and those genes would be American, free of accent, free of shame. His story from that point onward would be the story of Pilgrims and Indians and of flags on the ramparts still standing. American history was itself just a few hundred years old, not thousands of years, like his old history, which had grown wretched and patched and useless as his own fatherâs tattered texts
Mike Wilson took Lourdesâ scarves out of her drawer. He had not touched them since her death. They were long and silk and some had flowers and some had geometric lines, black and white they appeared to be a mathematicianâs dream.
Lourdes, went back to work a year after Ivan was born. She had been in a consciousness-raising group and one after another the woman began to receive paychecks and she was not the first or the last. She had taught calculus in a girlsâ school until March before her death. Her colleagues had come to the funeral and kissed him on the cheek or squeezed his hand and said they would miss her. Yes, yes, he had said, and was relieved when he knew their names.
She wore the scarves in her hair, or she wore them with her black coat. She wore them the way a parrot wears its tail, they just came with her every day. He would give them all to his daughter-in-law. She wouldnât wear them but she would keep them, in honor of Lourdes. He wanted to honor Lourdes. He would give this daughter-in-law the wedding ring, the simple band with a single diamond chip set into the gold. She had her own wedding band but it was time, it was important now to get that wedding band out of his chest of drawers, to move it on to another place. It weighed on him in the drawer.
He would not look at the photograph albums (his married son did not have leather-bound albums, he had online photos on his desktop). He didnât want to see his boys at the beach the summer they rented a mosquito-filled house in Fire Island. He didnât want to see lost teeth and birthday cakes and team trophies. He didnât want to see time slipping away. He especially didnât want to see Ivan, his slightly bucktoothed smile waving to the camera at his brotherâs engagement party. He especially didnât want to see Ivan whom he would never see again. He didnât want to see Ivan who belonged in jail, had been sentenced in absentia to ten years, who had disappeared and forfeited the bail money that had been posted by his girlfriend. He didnât want to think about Ivan at all but a man canât choose his thoughts and Ivan unbidden came again and again.
Iâm haunted, he told Dr. H.
Too bad Iâm not an exorcist, said Dr. H.
You could try, said Mike Wilson.
And what demon was it exactly that had run away with the boy that Ivan had been, citing the stats of every New York Yankee since 1921, unable to eat if his beloved Giants lost a game?
Mike Wilsonâs great-grandfather had danced at the Yom Kippur ball as the nineteenth century was ending. That night he had kissed the seamstress who would become his wife. On a tenement rooftop, under a scratchy wool blanket, the September air still warm, he had sent his genes into a welcoming place and those genes would be American, free of accent, free of shame. His story from that point onward would be the story of Pilgrims and Indians and of flags on the ramparts still standing. American history was itself just a few hundred years old, not thousands of years, like his old history, which had grown wretched and patched and useless as his own fatherâs tattered texts
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