The Last Marlin Read online

  By the second half of my sophomore year in high school, Mother was no longer painting. Consumed by rage, she couldn’t forgive Abe for breaking his promise and coming to New York, for the humiliation of Great Neck and Globe and the stench of Fischbach. She was obliterating her canvases, one after the next, glopping layers of gray and black paint over years of work. Almost no paintings remain from this period.

  I believed that Mother was angry with me. I had been a fool to bait her and criticize her work in front of her student Helen Rutt. In my adolescent myopia I kept trying to imagine ways to expunge divorce from her mind. Their divorce was perversion to me. It would bring terrible shame to the family. Mother would answer me, There is nothing you can do about it, which left me incensed and thwarted. It was my job to block the door. To argue or to distract her until she was back inside the studio. Until she forgot. I had no idea that her sister and father were now calling her daily, urging her to leave Abe. I.R. devised stories that during my father’s business trips he was carrying on affairs with other women. Thelma complained to Mother, “You are like a plane with the motor running that can’t get off the ground.”

  The timing of the next events is murky, which is disturbing. I should be able to recall exactly what happened, the important dates, the order of significant moments in our lives. It galls me that I cannot remember the names and addresses of more than a few of the tremendous buildings that Dad filled with fluorescents just forty years ago. My mother and Celia cannot agree on exactly what transpired in Great Neck after Dad purchased the Ebb Tide. There is no one else left to ask.

  Celia and Lennie began taking frequent trips to Great Neck. Whenever they visited, Stella smiled as though things were great in suburbia. But Abe’s sister smelled a rat. She and Dad took precautions. Abe signed over to Celia his fifty percent ownership in Lee Products to keep the Boston shop safe from I.R.’s lawyers. He knew Cele was the one person who would never screw him. In between visits to Great Neck, Abe’s sister called him with warnings. I.R. is going to try something. Be careful. Restrain your anger.

  My twelve-year-old brother was the only one Stella trusted. Of course Mother should leave Abe. Billy believed that the marriage was degrading, Abe was a lout, didn’t appreciate Mother’s art. Abe had dragged Bill to the barber, cut off all of his hair. They didn’t need him. No more of his anger and outrage. The Great Neck house was Bill’s Tara. Bill and Stella would live in the house forever, watch Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak movies on TV, eat Winnie’s well-done rib roasts.

  Mother and Bill grew silent when I came around. I didn’t know about I.R. and Thelma’s constant nagging. Whenever I felt a shadow pass through I yelled at my mother to be good. I pounded on the drums and prayed for good health. The Ebb Tide was idling in Florida waiting for events to sort themselves out. We just had to throw off the dock lines and head for the Bahamas.

  Abe’s sister recalls that I.R. arranged to have Abe committed into a mental hospital. This was part of his master plan for engineering Stella’s divorce and throwing Abe out of the Great Neck house. Mother says this never happened. She insists that he was put into the hospital for drug addiction. For years, when Dr. Nelson had made his late-night visits, he had been giving Dad shots of morphine and he was hooked. When he didn’t have the drug, Dad became unstable, even violent. Mother says that she committed Abe herself, there was no other choice, but allows that her father might have been encouraging.

  Details. It came down to the same gesture. They had locked him up in a small room. I.R. and Thelma had their hooks into Stella’s neck. In the hospital Abe satiated himself on deceit and betrayal. I wonder if I.R. ever considered the price of crossing Abe Waitzkin.

  It was two or three weeks before Dad was able to talk himself out of the hospital. He came home in a white rage. Mom was now living upstairs in the attic. I was afraid that he might kill her. We all steered clear of him, moved from room to room like terrified little fish. Don’t say a word to him when he is like this, she whispered. Stay in your room. I recall the spittle on my father’s chin when I told him not to hurt her. I was shaking and could not meet his stare. He walked away from me without a word.

  A few days later Dad drove the Buick Roadmaster into Maspeth to the Globe plant. He walked into his office and saw my uncle seated at his desk, talking business on Abe’s phone, swiveling in his chair. Cocksucking, prick bastard. The man had simmered beneath a smile at a hundred business meetings because he couldn’t sell like Abe.

  Dad was out.

  Abe was presented with a deal by Mom’s high-priced attorney. Get out of the house. I.R. would retain the considerable money he owed Abe in commissions and in return he would support Stella for the rest of her life. Dad went ballistic. The only way you will get me out of this house is in a pine coffin.

  By now I.R. had become the pure and unwavering focus of my father’s hatred. Stella was only a pawn in the game. I only want to live long enough to piss on your grandfather’s grave, he told me. In the next days, while the lawyers battled over the divorce settlement, Dad grew calmer, even reflective. He was already considering the details of his revenge.

  PART II

  BETRAYAL

  Shark Fishing

  THEY LOVED MY FATHER ON BIMINI. FORTY YEARS AGO MANNY THE grocer sold Abe cases of J&B to bring back to Lauderdale on the boat. Local guys hefted crates of booze onto the Ebb Tide, which made Dad feel vigorous. He slapped them on the back and paid big tips. Abe was a big roller, happy to pay exorbitant prices—it was show business.

  “What a man your daddy was,” Manny says to me each time I visit the island now and tie up my own boat at the Game Club dock. I rarely buy anything from Manny, which confuses and irritates him. We all draw our lines. But at times it feels warm and comforting to become my father and here on Bimini I slip into his skin without thinking. One can feel outraged but at the same time attracted to the vestiges of colonialism on these fine docks. It is a wonderful feeling to walk in the night past broken shanties, waving at natives one has known since childhood, talking about the travails of the Knicks and our kids and how the island has changed over the years or not changed and then to slip past the guard at the Game Club gate, to flip him a neat little wave like my old man, that same guard who barks in a harsh patois at native intruders, to breathe in the night air still heavy with yearning, the toss of palm trees in the colored pool lights, the bobbing of sleek fishing machines at rest. There is a sense that we, the sportfshing elite, are untouchable somehow, sleepy at the end of a long day of plunging down big seas, trolling foot-long bonefish and swimming mackerel; surely we will be sharing this idyllic scene forever, these deep blue waters and cool breezes rife with desire, not growing old despite sagging bellies and graying hair, sequestered from the world’s afflictions, sportfishing.

  “Throughout the marriage Abe would go out with his womanizing friends,” recalls Mother, “and when the drinking part of the night was over he would make his fast exit. Sorry, guys, I love my wife. But Abe was lying. He didn’t care about fidelity or passion. The truth was that Abe was a sick man and couldn’t perform. When I said I was going to leave him, he began telling his buddies that I was disfigured. I don’t know what he thought. Maybe he was referring to the long scar from my hysterectomy or that they had shaved me before the operation. That stuck in his mind because he rarely saw me undressed. He needed to tell them something. Appearance meant so much to Abe.

  “When I told him the divorce was final, Abe sneered at me, ‘When did you get so smart, Stella?’

  “‘Abe, this is no marriage. We don’t talk.’

  ‘“Who would want you, Stella?’”

  I.R. was a visionary. Everyone knew this in the electrical business. He anticipated trends in the American market, appreciated the larger picture. He knew history, that the ends justify the means. Whether Abe fooled around with women when he was in Detroit was not the issue. I.R. loved Stella, and Stella was languishing in a hideous marriage. He became emotional when he thought of h
is love for his eldest daughter and the future he wanted for her. I.R.’s hands were clean. He was sweeping with a big broom. Thelma was also mired in a bad marriage to Chet. Here too I.R. began planting seeds. He would take care of both of his girls. The family’s prosperity was as rock solid as the huge plant in Maspeth.

  When my father refused to leave the Great Neck house, I.R. recognized that this wasn’t negotiable. He convinced Stella to let Abe have the house. Call the lawyer, tell him, Grandpa said. Just get rid of Abe once and for all. The house is nothing, Stella. I’ll buy you better. You can go to my house in Palm Springs and paint the mountains at sunset.

  During the spring of my sophomore year in high school, Bill and I lived with Dad. Mother took a small apartment in Manhattan while she looked for a place for the three of us in Riverdale. “Losing the house would have been too humiliating to him, so he forced us to leave. What kind of man would do such a thing to his family. Abe was a monster.”

  Dad would lie in bed late into the morning, one bony leg raised to his chest, smoking Luckies. Eventually he went into the bathroom to fix himself up, as he put it. Throughout the house I could smell astringent and the sweet aroma of his bowels. Winnie had been with us for nearly all of the Great Neck years and was now gray and stooped. She folded Dad’s socks and placed them neatly into the little compartments in his drawers, cooked well-done briskets and chops, tried to keep things as they had been. The Buick Roadmaster seemed permanently moored in the driveway. Each afternoon Dad fell asleep with a burning cigarette in his hand. I would take it from between his fingers and kiss his leathery cheek. His satin bedcover had fifteen or twenty cigarette holes. Where would we ever find another to match the one on Mom’s bed? What was wrong with her? How could she move out when he was recovering from a horrible operation and was out of work?

  But then Dad would surprise me, emerge from desolation ready to eat Chinese with his boys. We would drive to Manhasset and he’d tell me not to worry about Mother, she’d come around. Or he’d assure me that I was healthy and if anything did come up, we could take care of it at the Clinic, no big deal. He promised Bill that he would always have his house in Great Neck, he could count on it. Over wor wonton my father was believable as a saint. He could make your heart soar with trust and good times coming. I’ve always loved that quality.

  I.R. celebrated the end of Abe. We dined at Cavanagh’s and I found myself sucked into Grandpa’s largesse. He is your father, mister. Of course you should love him. Grandpa became emotional over his generosity of spirit. He invited me to order shrimp cocktail. Then we all enjoyed Cavanagh’s famous sliced steak with toast bits soaked in gravy. My grandfather smiled at me. I was his eldest grandson, loved politics as he did. He lured me with the chance that someday I would be president of Globe. This was only stroking. Grandpa’s vision of the future was his son Alfred, only Alfred. If there was a god in heaven, his boy, his soul mate, would have a proper turn to guide the great factory. But what was the harm in dangling a possibility?

  Grandpa presented Mother with a brand-new Chevy station wagon. I recall his big round smile, he’d won. Stella, he was just a salesman, a chiseler. Don’t worry about everything, will you. I’ll take care of it. But listen to me. These dark paintings are not right. Maybe something more amusing with lighter colors. You need to develop a line, something people can relate to. Change it a little each year. But not too much. You want repeat customers. Please don’t argue with me. I know the business. You’ll see. We’ll make a catalog.

  Years before the divorce, as a seven- or eight-year-old, I would sit on the lawn of the Great Neck house and practice making time slow down. I would play with my water-pressurized rocket ship and luxuriate in the minutes I had before the next meal. I tried to savor the smallest particles of time. In the midst of my game a few minutes felt like days and the few outdoor hours that I had left before the next hateful school day stretched on like months. With practice I found that I was able to bring time to a near stop. Many afternoons I rejoiced in an endless expanse of minutes. And when time did happen to shoot ahead a week or a month, it was just a lapse of my concentration, and I fancied that I could even pull time back. In this mindset, bad events also lacked finality. I suspected that big events in life, indeed the very question of living and dying, were subject to revision. Nearly everything could be manipulated by clever decision making and concentration, especially when combined with inside connections. My father had proven this again and again making enormous deals with contractors, getting up off the mat, surviving when everyone said that he would die.

  I didn’t think of my parents’ divorce as irreversible. My outrage toward my mother was tempered by this view. I saw the thick clump of papers prepared by her attorneys but still it seemed as though Stella and Abe were only a whim away from putting happiness back together. Dad even implied that the Commissioner might be able to do something about it. We’ll see, he added cryptically. Many years later I am still susceptible to such revisionist thinking, particularly relative to tragedy, which I find difficult to look at straight on. Instead of feeling racking grief I tend to explain how catastrophe might have been averted. Betrayal is only a matter of choice. What if Mother had returned to the house? Why not? She was so quixotic.

  In the late spring of my sophomore year, my friend Jon Lehman would come by the Great Neck house to commiserate. Both of us had a precocious sense of shame and propriety. Jon shared the humiliation I felt over Mom moving out, the family breaking apart. He even offered to run away with me and I pondered how effective this blackmail might be. Finally we decided not to because the gesture was too gaudy and embarrassing.

  In the house Dad was musing and said little for long stretches. I couldn’t reconcile the passion I felt for him with my decision to leave with Mom and Bill. I felt like a traitor. Mother had arranged for me to attend a private school, Barnard School for Boys. They bribed me with sweets. On one phone call the assistant headmaster said that I was a smart boy and owed it to myself to come to Barnard to study literature. The football coach called and asked what position I played. Without thinking, I said quarterback, and he answered, we need a good quarterback here. I couldn’t believe my ears. Throwing the pigskin for Barnard School for Boys. That clinched it. I was leaving my father to pursue my football career. It was all-American and guiltless.

  I told Jon Lehman about the call from the football coach and that in August I would be attending training camp. Waitzkin, this is crazy, he said. In our friendship Lehman’s part was to ease me back from erratic choices and to soften my falls. You can’t do this, he cautioned. You’re a small, skinny guy. You’re afraid of pain. And they could break your back. I argued with him a little but fear and sense took hold. I realized that I would never lace on the pads for Barnard. I was abandoning ship, plain and simple. Leaving Dad. Leaving home. Maybe I was afraid to stay with him.

  One evening Mother pulled up in front of the Great Neck house and Bill and I threw our things in the back of the new Chevy. We were like three children, running away. Mother drove at eighty, ninety. I recall a million bugs splattering against the windshield. Bill giggled at his mother’s wild spirit, the same as his own and Liz Taylor’s. I was guilty to leave Dad this way, fretting in his bed, while Winnie cooked potatoes, cleaned, ran half-empty loads of laundry. But I was absolved by the lure of the night. I urged Mother to drive faster, pushed her. Bill laughed and opened the window. A rush of hot wind. We skidded off the road to avoid hitting a truck, took a deep breath and sped off again, spitting gravel. Bill and Mom were free. I wasn’t so sure.

  We got to Toronto around midnight, stayed up until four A.M. in a half-empty club listening to Carmen McCrae. I rapped out rhythms on the table. Mother swayed and closed her eyes. While Carmen sang her throaty blues I felt Dad’s timing and style, imagined him selling the goods to Charlie Zweifel, I yearned for him. The next morning we turned around and headed to Tanglewood. Exhausted, we lay on the big lawn and listened to the Boston Pops. And then late at night we
raced off to Jacob’s Pillow to hear Dave Brubeck’s soaring runs of improvisational Bach, and then cool Ahmad Jamal came on at two A.M. Mother whispered that Jamal was too tame, like Montovani. I could feel this. I was swelling with the music and the heavy summer air full of lusty promise. We ate good food. I told Bill that we would get a great ride if we played our cards right. Mother and Dad would compete for our favor. Imagine the restaurants Dad would take us to, the fishing trips on the Ebb Tide. Divorce wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe you were right, babe, I said to my brother. I leaned in Bill’s direction, stroked him. It’s gonna be great, babe. We sell one another out for tips. I see it again and again. But I could never quite win over my brother.

  Sure there were big changes, but there was more continuity in our new lives than I could have imagined. Much of that came from Globe. Everyone in the world knew about Globe, and yet it was ours, massive and providing. The company had given our family the home in Great Neck and now our spacious apartment in Riverdale. It had paid for our boats and vacations in Palm Springs and Miami. More elementally, it gave us power, affected the way we walked, our sense of security in the world. Even I.R.’s son Alfred, with shortness of breath and rosy cheeks prescient with demise, was viewed by many as a lion, the heir. None of us could miss because of Globe. The factory was our safety net, a hedge against stupidity, shortcomings and mistakes. The grandchildren could afford bad grades. The firm would absolve us all, absorb us into its ample offices and showrooms. Even for my mother Globe was essential, providing the perfect anti-Christ—vile commerce, capitalism—spurring her to paint ever more darkly. Rage and degradation drove her work; in one self-portrait of this period Mother’s eyeless mouthless mutilated face and rat tufts of hair are whirling into the abyss. Hans Hofmann asked, Stella, where do you get such ideas? Looking at the pavement, she answered. She never mentioned Globe. It was her shame, her dark secret. Mother wanted to be poor so ardently. But my grandfather patiently explained to her that Globe would always be there for her and the family, providing a comfortable way of life, new cars, status in the community, the best medical insurance. It was his destiny to provide for the family. Even after he was gone things would be okay. The company would endure. With his venerable attorneys Grandpa had written up various trusts, wills and position papers (Mother furiously refused to read them) ensuring our futures and the direction of the company into the next millennium at least. To a boy such grandiosity was easily confused with immortality itself. And though I hated Globe for my father, I still felt ennobled by my blood connection to that great firm.