The Fly Caster Who Tried To Make Peace With the World Page 5

  Chapter 4

  You see, things were going so well. My father was making a lot of money and becoming a famous lawyer. My mother was playing piano professionally and getting more and more involved in the garment workers’ movement.

  As for me, I was hitting a lot of home runs and feeling very accepted by my private-school classmates—except by Brett Wilson and his two close friends, Parker and Jim. I guess Brett had a hard time now that I, not he, was the best baseball player in our class.

  As for the world, things also were changing for the better.

  More and more people, for example, bought cars, including my father. On the day he did, he took me, my sister and my mother for a drive down Fifth Avenue, to Madison Square. He parked in front of the new, white, fifty-story Metropolitan Life Building, the tallest in the world. We got out of our new Ford. I tilted my head all the way back. My eyes followed what looked like a bright stone road leading up to a big, round clock. The face of the clock seemed to have a cartoon character-like hairline. But the hairline was really a row of pillars. Above the row, the building formed a green pyramid. The pyramid had big windows. The windows looked like the four eyes of a monster. The monster was probably a king, because on top of his head was what looked like a crown.

  “Ian, in a few years,” my father said, “one of my new clients, The Woolworth Corporation, is going to build an even taller building.”

  I asked, “Do you think buildings will ever be a hundred stories high?”

  “I don’t think they’ll ever go that high.”

  Besides more cars and more tall buildings, there was more of something I couldn’t see or understand: electricity. Suddenly, almost overnight, electric lights shined everywhere: in homes, on streets and on signs.

  Things were changing for the better in the world, not just because there were more things like electric lights and cars, but also because there were less of some things like typhoid, cholera, diphtheria and yellow fever.

  “Man’s goal,” my teacher said, “should be to end all disease and all war.”

  He certainly made sense to me, more than I could know—until the first real cold day of December. I came home from school and was surprised to see my father. He had left work early. He sat on the couch and held my mother’s hand. She cried.

  I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” my father answered.

  “Michael, Ian and Rebecca are our children. We have to tell them the truth.”

  I asked, “What truth?”

  “Your mother is going to be sick for a while.”

  “Sick? What do you mean sick?”

  “They found a lump,” my mother said. “We didn’t want to tell you, Ian, until we knew how serious it is. I have—” My mother closed her eyes.

  “You have what?”

  She opened her eyes. Tears streamed down her face. “I have women’s cancer.”

  I knew she meant breast cancer. “But you’re too young for cancer.”

  “Children get cancer,” my father said.

  “Cancer is never fair.” My mother wiped away her tears. “It isn’t fair to children. It isn’t fair to young women. But why me, Ian? What did I—justice can be cruel. I tried so hard to make right, to become a great mother. Maybe with, with my—I failed at that.”

  “Elizabeth, it’s a lie that people bring cancer upon themselves,” my father insisted.

  “Maybe I should’ve raised my children to believe in God.”

  “They’ll believe in God if and when they want to.”

  I asked, “So what’s the doctor going to do?”

  “He’s going to perform a radical mastectomy.”

  Whatever it was, a radical mastectomy didn’t sound good. “What’s a radical, whatever you call it?”

  “It’s a new procedure,” my father said. “Dr. Halsted believes that cancer spreads outward along specific pathways in the body. Therefore, if he cuts out the tumor and the pathways he’ll stop the cancer’s flow. You see, Ian, just the way engineers are getting better at building taller and taller buildings, doctors are getting better and better at stopping disease.”

  The next day my mother went to the hospital. My sister and I waited up late for my father to come home. 

  “Do you think mom’s going to die?” my sister asked me.

  “No. She’s too young and too good to die.”

  “But good people die.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Rebecca. Dad says she has the best doctor.”

  Finally, my father came home. He hugged me and Rebecca. “Everything went fine,” he said. “Perhaps the real reason God blessed me with success is so that I can get your mother the best and latest medical treatment.”

  I asked, “How can you still believe in God?”

  “Now is when we need God more than ever.”

  I didn’t think so, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “When can we visit her?” my sister asked.

  “Tomorrow,” my father answered.

  The next day we walked went to the hospital. My mother lay in bed. She was as white as snow. She opened her eyes and smiled. Her eyes shined joyfully. Rebecca and I ran up to her.

  She grabbed our hands. “Let me kiss you,” she whispered.

  We leaned over her.

  She kissed our cheeks, again and again. “No more cancer. Dr. Halsted cut it out. I’m so blessed to have two beautiful children.” She cried suddenly, then squeezed my hand.

  I cried too but only for a second. I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to let my mother die.

  We visited my mother ten days in a row, but we never saw Dr. Halsted.

  I asked my father, “Doesn’t the doctor come around?”

  “Only for a few minutes a day. He has so many patients to see.”

  A few days later my mother came home; and I was sure she was going to be all right, even though she was too weak to read or to play the piano. My sister and I, therefore, often played her favorite records on the gramophone and read parts of her favorite books to her.

  Looking back, I now know those days and evenings in our living room were some of the happiest of my life, even though I was often sad that none of my mother’s old friends visited. But her new friends from the theater did; and my sadness was balanced by happiness. I remember one day I came home from school and saw about twenty people sitting in our living room, singing along with my mother’s piano playing. My mother’s big blue eyes beamed right at me. She smiled and looked more beautiful than ever. I thought, Maybe she’s not sick anymore. And maybe there really is a God.

  That night I asked my father why my mother’s old friends deserted her.

  “Ian, I wish I could give you an answer, but if I did I’d be lying.”

  “Maybe people think cancer is contagious.”

  “They know it’s not.”

  “Should I tell some of my close friends at school that my mother is sick?”

  “If you want.”

  I told Steve and Rudy, then said, “Please don’t tell anyone else.”

  But Steve or Rudy did, because one day during lunch Brett Wilson grinned. “I read that women who do bad things sometimes end up with cancer. Isn’t it amazing how God works?”

  “Yes, it is,” Jim Miller, Brett’s best friend, answered.

  I stared down and said nothing. I didn’t want everyone to know my mother was sick. But that was only half the truth. The other half—a half I couldn’t hide from myself—was that I was too scared to stand up to Brett.

  Later, I walked home enraged at myself—then I saw my mother staring out the window as if she were in a haze. She didn’t even look at me.

  Scared, I asked, “Why don’t we go to the park? It’s a beautiful day.”

  “I’m too tired.”

  “But you’ve been feeling better.”

  “Well, not today.” She cried.

  I said, “The doctor cut out the cancer. Why are you crying?”

  “Sometimes I get so scared of deat
h, of the nothingness, of not being with my children. Maybe there really is something beyond. Maybe your father is right.”

  I held her hand. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

  She forced a smile. “I guess it’s up to, to nature.”

  “Nature is supposed to be good.”

  “Who really knows what nature is supposed to be.”

  A week later my mother started sleeping a lot. Suspecting she was drinking again, I looked through the kitchen cabinets and found a half-full bottle of vodka. The next day I showed it her. “You promised us.”

  “I know, but, but look at my hand. It’s swollen. Some nights it’s like a fire is burning down my shoulder and my arm. How could a God do this to me? Was I ever really evil? Haven’t I tried to live a good life?”

  I put my arm around my mother. “I love you, Mom. You’re the best mother in the whole, wide world.”

  “I love you so much, Ian. I’m so scared of leaving you.” She cried.

  I hugged her and fought back tears, but the tears were stronger than I was. I ran up to my room, lay on my bed and surrendered to my tears. I cried and buried my face in my pillow and thought, Damn you, world! I hate you. What kind of world are you when good people, like my mother, get really sick? And you, God, if you really existed you’d get rid of all disease and not let good people die. I’ll never believe in you! Never!

  Later, I went into my mother’s room to wish her good-night. She lay in bed, reading my father’s Bible.

  Surprised, I said, “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

  “I never said—I mean there were times I wondered. Besides, your father is right: some of the stories in the Bible are so beautiful, like when Esther marries the Persian King to save her people.”

  And so my mother turned from drinking to reading the Bible and to going to church. One day she asked me to come. I didn’t want to, but to please her, I did. I guess the only thing I liked about sitting on a wooden pew was looking at the red, yellow and green stained-glass windows and thinking how electricity could never make the windows shine more beautifully than the bright sun.

  Now all during this time something beside my mother’s cancer ate at me: my shame over not standing up to Brett Wilson. Brett sensed that I was scared of him; and I sensed that he was scared of me—not of me fighting him, but of me making the varsity baseball team instead of him. During tryouts, Coach Collins divided us into two teams. Though I faced the varsity’s best pitcher, I hit a home run and a double. In the seventh inning Coach Collins told me to get on the mound. Knowing I’d get a chance to pitch to Brett, I ran onto the mound and blocked out everything except the catcher’s mitt and my father’s words: “When you throw a ball you must relax and let your body flow and do the work.”

  I threw fastball after fastball and struck out the first hitter. Big Billy Thompson, the team’s best hitter, stepped up. I threw a curve. He popped it up and cursed. Finally, Brett stepped into the batter’s box and glared at me. Ignoring him, I stared at the catcher’s mitt and decided to challenge him with a fastball. I placed my fingers across the seams of the ball. Slowly I wound up. I pushed off my back foot and shifted my weight forward, moving my arm faster and faster. I snapped my wrist straight down, as my father taught me, and pretended I skimmed a stone off the top of the water.

  Brett swung late and missed. One strike ahead, I decided to really intimidate Brett. I threw a fastball high and inside. Brett froze. Coach Collins called the pitch a strike. Brett stepped out of the batter’s box. I stared into the catcher’s mitt and waited. Brett stepped back in. Two strikes ahead, I decided to throw a curve. I placed my fingers on top of the seams and tightened my grip. Again I wound up and threw, this time sharply twisting my wrist. The ball zoomed down the middle of the strike zone. Brett swung. The ball seemed to fall off a table. Brett missed. The ball bounced on the plate. Brett flung the bat down.

  After the game Coach Collins came up to me and shook my hand. “Ian, you’re on the big team.”

  Feeling redeemed, I proudly walked back to school and into the locker room. Brett walked in behind me. I took my uniform off.

  “Is it true, Ian, your mother once worked in a strip show?” Brett asked.

  I bent down, untied my shoelace and wondered which one of my friends had revealed another one of my secrets.

  “Ian, didn’t you hear me!”

  “Brett, why don’t you lay off,” Billy Thompson warned.

  “Why don’t you let Ian fight his own battles,” Brett insisted.

  “We’re a team,” Billy stated. “We fight together.”

  I untied my other shoelace and wondered if a fight with Brett would be like hand-to-hand combat, then I saw myself punching Brett in the face. But the punch happened only in my mind.

  Brett laughed.