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Authors: Neil Gordon
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more and more, and in fact, the time we were spending together made up most of his life outside working and taking care of his daughter. In fact I knew nearly nothing about him: so little that I had no conception of how he lived. I mean, I knew who Julia Montgomery was about as good as any other
People
magazine reader, but I hadn’t ever really put together how
rich
they were.
I found out because we used to run a trail your daddy knew on private land up to Meades, just outside Woodstock, and one day when we had pushed on an extra mile we emerged suddenly in what looked to me to be an endless expanse of mowed pasture, in the middle of which sat a sprawling ranch house. When I realized it was his, and in fact, the whole trail we’d been running on went with it, I couldn’t help myself.
“Jim, my God, you
own
this.”
He shrugged. “I don’t own anything. I’m just the token Jew here.”
Though I guess he was enjoying my shock, because he took me in and gave me the tour: a living room as big as the auditorium in Mount Marion Elementary, a sunken couch area, a wall of windows looking out over the mountains to the north. Huge bedrooms decorated in Arts and Crafts, no reproductions. A swimming pool in a glass geodesicdome. Then he explained that Julia had inherited from her maternal grandfather, and was in fact richer in her own right than her father—as well as far more willing to spend the money.
I may as well tell you, seeing we’re all friends here, that I remember that day not just because it was the only time I was ever in Julia Montgomery’s house, but for a couple of other reasons, too.
One was because, in the tour of the house, we unexpectedly came upon you, Izzy, in your room, playing on your bed while a baby-sitter sat reading a magazine, and when you saw him, I swear, I don’t think you even touched ground on your way into his arms. And your father is surprised, but he pretends not to be and asks where Julia is in this offhand voice. The baby-sitter answers, without even looking at him, that Julia had gone out. What time? Nine o’clock, which you had to figure was right after your father left for work. A silence greeted that. Then your father told the baby-sitter she could go; he’d stay home now. “I’ll need pay for the whole day, mister,” was the baby-sitter’s response.
The second reason was because watching your father with you that day was when I fell in love with him, because as you know, that’s what happened. He had a gift with you, and let me tell you, as a teacher, I have been watching parents screw their children up for a long, long time. Watching him, this man who could not have been more different from me and my husband, I found myself thinking: This is how Donny would have been with Leo, Leo whom Donny never met. And that was the first time I felt desire for him.
So we became friends. Either out running or, as Julia started disappearing for longer or longer periods, hanging out down at my house—I didn’t want to visit his place again, nor did he invite me to. And then, one day when you were perhaps six, we’re sitting at my kitchen table rehydrating from a run and Leo, who has just finished basic training and is waiting assignment to flight school, is practicing dives into the swimming pool, and I hear a sound precisely like an underinflated basketball slapping a concrete surface, and thank God your father had been lifting weights for ten years because Leo is on the floor of the pool in a cloud of red and he didn’t wake up until J had hauled him right out, 170 pounds of inert adolescent, and started CPR. He swears to me, he canstill taste that blend of blood and chlorine in his mouth, these many years later.
Know what? When someone saves your child’s life, you don’t need any more excuse to be friends. And so I made the first friend of my life who wasn’t a Republican, and your daddy made the first friend of his life who was. Not the second, not the third. The first.
People
magazine reader, but I hadn’t ever really put together how
rich
they were.
I found out because we used to run a trail your daddy knew on private land up to Meades, just outside Woodstock, and one day when we had pushed on an extra mile we emerged suddenly in what looked to me to be an endless expanse of mowed pasture, in the middle of which sat a sprawling ranch house. When I realized it was his, and in fact, the whole trail we’d been running on went with it, I couldn’t help myself.
“Jim, my God, you
own
this.”
He shrugged. “I don’t own anything. I’m just the token Jew here.”
Though I guess he was enjoying my shock, because he took me in and gave me the tour: a living room as big as the auditorium in Mount Marion Elementary, a sunken couch area, a wall of windows looking out over the mountains to the north. Huge bedrooms decorated in Arts and Crafts, no reproductions. A swimming pool in a glass geodesicdome. Then he explained that Julia had inherited from her maternal grandfather, and was in fact richer in her own right than her father—as well as far more willing to spend the money.
I may as well tell you, seeing we’re all friends here, that I remember that day not just because it was the only time I was ever in Julia Montgomery’s house, but for a couple of other reasons, too.
One was because, in the tour of the house, we unexpectedly came upon you, Izzy, in your room, playing on your bed while a baby-sitter sat reading a magazine, and when you saw him, I swear, I don’t think you even touched ground on your way into his arms. And your father is surprised, but he pretends not to be and asks where Julia is in this offhand voice. The baby-sitter answers, without even looking at him, that Julia had gone out. What time? Nine o’clock, which you had to figure was right after your father left for work. A silence greeted that. Then your father told the baby-sitter she could go; he’d stay home now. “I’ll need pay for the whole day, mister,” was the baby-sitter’s response.
The second reason was because watching your father with you that day was when I fell in love with him, because as you know, that’s what happened. He had a gift with you, and let me tell you, as a teacher, I have been watching parents screw their children up for a long, long time. Watching him, this man who could not have been more different from me and my husband, I found myself thinking: This is how Donny would have been with Leo, Leo whom Donny never met. And that was the first time I felt desire for him.
So we became friends. Either out running or, as Julia started disappearing for longer or longer periods, hanging out down at my house—I didn’t want to visit his place again, nor did he invite me to. And then, one day when you were perhaps six, we’re sitting at my kitchen table rehydrating from a run and Leo, who has just finished basic training and is waiting assignment to flight school, is practicing dives into the swimming pool, and I hear a sound precisely like an underinflated basketball slapping a concrete surface, and thank God your father had been lifting weights for ten years because Leo is on the floor of the pool in a cloud of red and he didn’t wake up until J had hauled him right out, 170 pounds of inert adolescent, and started CPR. He swears to me, he canstill taste that blend of blood and chlorine in his mouth, these many years later.
Know what? When someone saves your child’s life, you don’t need any more excuse to be friends. And so I made the first friend of my life who wasn’t a Republican, and your daddy made the first friend of his life who was. Not the second, not the third. The first.
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