Read Online Blue Genes by Christopher Lukas - Free Book Online Page B

T-shirt. He is three years old. I, clutching the chair to steady myself, stand on the other side. Both of us wear shorts. My curly hair needs cutting. An impish grin is on my face, and Baba looks with great love upon the scene. In her lap—a book and a ball, some of the paraphernalia of her work.
    When I was four—still, by all reports, a sunshiny, precocious child—photos show me smiling all the time, but a little too chubby kneed and precious for my taste. My famous actor cousin, Paul, offered to take me to Hollywood, where I would become—he said—the male Shirley Temple. My father, bless his soul, demurred.
    All the photos and accounts tell the same story: I was fair and curly haired and ran everywhere after Mother. Tony was deep and dark and troubled, his sallow coloration and furrowed brows signaling troubled inner thoughts. When he was six or seven, my parents sent him to a psychiatrist. Perhaps they saw Mother’s earlier abandonment of him as the cause of his sadness; perhaps he had bad dreams. Perhaps there were more pressing problems. No one ever informed me.
    Later, as adolescents, when we saw Joe Btfsplk in
Li’l Abner
cartoons, we felt that Tony, like Joe, was always under a cloud.
    Was he the wearer of blue genes, inherited from Mother and her ancestors; or was he reacting to her suicide attempt just after his birth? Or both? Or was he simply unlucky? Whichever, Tony always exhibited a sense of sadness.
    There was another person in attendance at the Rosedale Avenue home: Proctor. This tall, sturdy African-American served as occasional chauffeur, as well as man of all trades, fixing the lawn mower, the sump pump, the kitchen sink. He lived above the garage and became, by default, an educator to Tony. By
default
, because in many ways Dad was not able to act as a paterfamilias. His concerns about Mother, his concerns about his career, created a father present in body but not necessarily in mind.
    So it was Proctor who taught Tony to ride a bicycle, how to bat a ball, how to garden, weed, harvest. In later writings, it was Proctor whom Tony credited for his devout interest in professional baseball.
    There must have been times when the entire family—all four of us—was together during these early years, but I have only one strong recollection of such an occasion. It overshadows all the others.
    At the age of five, Tony had already learned the rudiments of swimming. Since I was two years younger, I was tentative about even wading into the lake. The bottom was muddy, and I feared snakes or snapping turtles, so I stayed on the small sandy ledge about six feet from shore, calf deep at most.
    One Saturday, however, as Mother in her bathing suit watched from the bank, I was encouraged to wade out farther—where the water was deep enough to swim. I went slowly into the unknown—afraid to dog-paddle but also afraid to take my feet off the muddy bottom, worried I might sink. I was on tiptoe when I felt a little wavelet and suddenly thought I was going to go over the top of my toes and drown.
    Panicked, I cried for help.
    From a few yards away, Tony struck out for me, as did Mother, diving in from the bank. Then I saw that my father, dressed in a fine summer suit, was stripping his jacket off. He, too, dove into the water.
    I quickly realized I
wasn’t
drowning. Still afloat, I shouted, “I’m fine!” and started dog-paddling toward shore.
    Everyone was relieved that I was safe. But Dad was furious that I had ruined his suit. “Don’t cry wolf unless you
mean
it,” he shouted. “Look what you’ve done!”
    I still try not to cry wolf, and I try to believe that Dad loved me. I am not totally successful at either.
    ______
    ROSEDALE AVENUE WAS WHERE OCCASIONAL LAPSES foretold distant events.
    I remember sitting one spring with my mother, in the rock garden, listening to the birds and watching the shadows of a great elm tree play against the front of the house. Mother was quiet, too quiet. I glimpsed in her