The Promise Read online

  “What do you see?” I asked him.

  “Clouds.”

  “Only clouds?”

  “Clouds and things.”

  “What things?”

  “Stars.”

  “Clouds and stars in the daytime?”

  “I had a dream last Monday night. We were sailing and we sailed off the lake and into the sky and there were clouds and stars and I showed you the constellations. We sailed between the stars along the outlines of the constellations. It was a good dream.”

  “Do you have many dreams?”

  “Yes. But I don’t like to talk about them.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t.”

  “All right.”

  “Is a friend of yours coming up tomorrow for a visit?”

  I looked at him.

  “I heard them talking. They said a friend of yours would be coming over tomorrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to meet him. But they want me to go to a movie or something. Why won’t they let me meet him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s something going on. I don’t know what it is. But they’re planning something.”

  I was quiet.

  “That was a good dream,” he said. “I really liked that dream.”

  We sailed smoothly and in silence and off in the distance was the faint line of the horizon and about one hundred yards to starboard were the trees of the shoreline, the woods through which I walked from the cottage to Rachel’s house, and the lake glistened like satin in the sunlight and Michael being ill seemed unreal. Later, tacking toward shore, I looked up and saw a figure in white on the dock. We were very far away and I could not tell who it was. It went quickly along the dock and up the stairway and into the house.

  Afterward, we all sat in the living room and there were cold drinks and pleasant talk and much joking about the volleyball game in which Rachel’s parents had been trounced, and Ruth Gordon smoked a cigarette and talked about the museums they had seen in Europe—she talked about art as if she might be able to take over one of her sister-in-law’s courses at Brooklyn College—and the indecent way the French had of ignoring you unless you spoke French, and thank heaven they both spoke French, and the poverty in the back alleys of Rome and the rooted aristocratic loveliness—those were her words—of Oxford and Cambridge. The living room was large, rambling, with brightly colored Navajo rugs on the floor and a high vaulted ceiling. Bookcases covered part of one wall and Sarah Gordon’s huge abstract paintings hung on the wall opposite. The side of the room facing the lake was all glass, sliding doors opening onto the porch. Sunlight streamed through the wide expanse of glass, and the bright summer furniture and the rugs and the paintings gave depth and brilliance to the room—and the talk gave it warmth. They were a close family, and, of course, not awed, as I was, by the fame and notoriety of Abraham Gordon. They teased him good-naturedly about how he had misplaced the passports on the way out of France, had become airsick over the Alps, had let himself be fleeced by a taxi driver in Naples. Yet there was a faint aura of darkness about them too, a hint of strain to the cheerfulness; a sense of foreboding seeped through the occasional lapses in their talk. Michael sat quietly, listening and sipping at a Coke. Rachel came into the room sometime between the misplaced passports and the airsickness over the Alps. She had on her reading glasses and looked bleary-eyed. How was Leopold Bloom? I asked her. Unhappy, she said. He had lost his Stephen. He was a star in the constellation of Cassiopeia. But Molly Bloom—Molly Bloom was something else. Molly Bloom was recumbent and big with seed. And she, Rachel, would drink to that with a Coke because she was practically done with Ithaca. Ruth Gordon said that Rachel should be thankful she hadn’t decided to do her paper on the Penelope section. Abraham Gordon laughed. Joseph Gordon grinned around the pipe he held between his teeth and said that was the best part of the book. Sarah Gordon gave him a sharp glance and nodded her head in the direction of Michael, who clearly hadn’t the slightest notion of what they were talking about.

  Later, Rachel walked with me down the dock to the Sailfish. She knew what my father and I had talked about with her uncle that morning. They all knew. They were grateful. What time did I think Danny would be able to come over tomorrow?

  I told her I didn’t know and would have to call her after my father and I talked to Danny. Then I told her that her aunt was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.

  She nodded absently. She was still wearing her reading glasses and they gave her a schoolteacher look.

  “What does she do?” I asked.

  “My aunt? She takes care of my uncle and Michael.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “I meant it seriously. She edits my uncle’s books. She edits them, types the final drafts, checks the galleys, goes over the footnotes, and sees to it that everything gets published correctly. In between she worries about Michael and about my uncle having another heart attack one day.”

  “He’ll have another heart attack if he keeps playing volleyball like that.”

  “The volleyball is exercise. On doctor’s orders. It was a mild heart attack anyway. Reuven, please call me as soon as you know when Danny will be over.”

  I promised I would. “Take off your glasses. Why do you wear your glasses when you’re not reading?”

  “I didn’t even know I had them on.”

  “Molly Bloom big with seed can make you forget anything,” I said.

  She laughed.

  I took the Sailfish back across the lake.

  My father was on the porch. He sat at the wooden table, staring out at the sunlight on the lawn and the maple.

  How were the galleys coming along? I asked him.

  He did not look at me. The galleys were all right, he said. There were some errors with the Greek words, and he had had to revise some passages that seemed a little obscure now that he was reading them in print. Otherwise, the galleys were fine. He spoke quietly, his voice sounding hoarse. I could begin checking the footnotes and the variant readings as soon as we returned to the city, he said. He would call the librarian at the Zechariah Frankel Seminary. There would be no problem obtaining permission for me to use the rare manuscripts. He was silent a moment. His face was pale, unusually pale, even for him. “We did not even talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls,” he murmured.

  I was quiet.

  “I meant to ask him about the Dead Sea Scrolls.” He sat there, looking at the sunlight on the lawn and the maple.

  Danny arrived the next day a little before lunch. He was tired. He looked haggard and he yawned repeatedly during lunch and said he hadn’t slept most of the night because of that emergency and all he wanted now was a year of sleep. He had never been up to the cottage before and he gazed hungrily at the lawn and the maple. The maple looked inviting, he said. He could easily sleep a year in the shade of that maple. Maybe he would even go down to the lake later on, he said. But first he wanted to sleep. It had been a bad emergency with a schizophrenic boy. I had never seen him so tired. But after lunch my father and I took him out to the porch and the three of us talked for a while. Sure he would see Professor Gordon, Danny said. If we wanted him to see Professor Gordon … He kept glancing at me. He was wide awake now.

  I called Rachel. She would come over for Danny. It would be a while before she could get to the cottage. She would have to drive her mother and Michael to a movie in Peekskill first. They had found a good double feature for him. She would pick up Danny on the way back. She sounded a little frantic.

  It was almost an hour before I heard the DeSoto. I opened the front door and saw Rachel getting out of the car. I called to her to stay where she was. She closed the car door and looked at me through the open side window. Danny and I went down the walk.

  I introduced them. I saw Rachel glance at the small black skullcap on Danny’s head and at his face. She seemed tense and weary. Danny slid into the front seat beside her. I watched them drive off.

  He
was gone more than three hours. I sat on the porch, trying to study Talmud. Then I tried reading The New York Times. Then I did some problems in symbolic logic. The sun paled behind thin, high clouds and the air grew cool. My father went inside for a sweater. He stared a while at the maple and the lawn before he returned to the galleys.

  It had turned quite cool and my father had taken the galleys inside and was working at the kitchen table by the time I heard the DeSoto pull up in front of the cottage. I came down the walk and saw Danny and Rachel sitting in the front seat, talking. They looked at me as I came up to the car. Neither of them said anything.

  Danny climbed out of the car. Rachel gave me a nod and a pale smile and drove off toward Peekskill.

  “Well?” I said to Danny.

  He said nothing. The lines of his face were tight. We came into the cottage.

  “You were there a long time.”

  “There was a lot to talk about.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Yes.”

  My father looked up from the galleys as we entered the kitchen. The three of us sat around the table. Outside the sky was bleak with clouds. A cold breeze blew across the lawn.

  “Were you able to be of help?” my father asked gently.

  “I think so.”

  “Are you permitted to talk about it?”

  “They said I could tell you everything. But they don’t want you to tell anyone else.”

  “Of course,” my father said.

  “What did you talk about for three hours?” I asked.

  “Michael.”

  “Just Michael?”

  “And the treatment center.”

  I stared at him. I saw my father stare at him.

  “They wanted to know all about the treatment center,” Danny said.

  “What for?”

  “They want to put Michael in.”

  “Into the treatment center?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God,” I said.

  “Michael is that sick?” my father asked. “Yes.”

  “I’ve been with him for weeks,” I said. “I never saw him that sick.”

  “He’s very sick. He breaks things. He bums books. He shattered his telescope a week before he came up here. He’s a serious discipline problem in school. And he resists therapy. That’s always an indication of something very deep-seated and serious. They’ve been told he might harm himself. They’re very frightened. They thought the summer would help and he would change. They were deluding themselves, they realize that now. I’m going to talk to the administrator and my supervisor. There’s a procedure everyone has to go through. But they’re ready to start immediately.”

  “I never saw it.” I felt my hands cold with icy sweat. “I never saw any of that in Michael.”

  “Yes you did,” Danny said quietly. “But you didn’t know what you were seeing.”

  He was moody and subdued all during supper. Yes, he would be in the same apartment next year, he said, in response to my father’s question. It was a good apartment. They had promised to replace the worn linoleum and to give it a fresh coat of paint. He would be going to school and working three full days a week at the treatment center. I told him I hoped he would be opening his window. He smiled bleakly.

  I asked him if he had ever read any of Abraham Gordon’s books. Yes, he had read his books, he said. He couldn’t think of any books he disagreed with more.

  “Abraham Gordon is a great scholar,” my father said.

  Danny said he wasn’t questioning Abraham Gordon’s scholarship, only his theology.

  “I understand how you feel, Danny,” my father said. “But Abraham Gordon has achieved something that is remarkable. To develop a theology for those who can no longer believe literally in God and revelation and who still wish to remain observant and not abandon the tradition—that is a remarkable achievement.”

  Danny said he didn’t have that kind of a problem.

  He left shortly after supper. He had not rested at all. He looked tired to the point of exhaustion.

  I sat at the kitchen table with my father. He was working on the galleys.

  “Why did they pick that treatment center?” I said.

  He looked up from the galleys.

  “Why did they pick the treatment center where Danny is working?”

  “They know of Danny.”

  “So what? Do you know how many good therapists there are in New York? What do they want with Danny?”

  My father was silent a moment. “Reuven, did you ever mention to Rachel how Danny was raised?”

  “Of course not.”

  “She knows nothing of the silence?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” From the time Danny was about six or seven until the end of his last year in college, Reb Saunders, Danny’s father, had deliberately created a barrier of silence between himself and his son, except when they studied Talmud together. He was frightened of Danny’s cold brilliance; he wanted to teach his son what it meant to suffer. Danny had suffered, all right. I did not understand what connection there could be between that and Michael, and I said so to my father.

  He did not respond.

  “This isn’t a coincidence,” I said. “You heard what Professor Gordon said. They were planning to talk to Danny anyway. What do they want with Danny?”

  “I have no idea,” my father said. He looked at me curiously for a moment, then went back to working on the galleys.

  Rachel called me later that evening. They had had a good talk with Danny. Her aunt and uncle were deeply grateful. Did I know what a kind and warm and sympathetic friend I had?

  How was Michael? I wanted to know.

  Moody, she said. He knew something was going on that had to do with him, but he had no idea what it was. “We had an awful time getting him out of the house,” she said. “He kept saying he wanted to meet Reuven’s friend.”

  “When are they going to tell him?”

  She didn’t know, she said. But Michael and his parents were going back to the city tomorrow. Her uncle was impatient now to start the procedure for getting Michael admitted. Danny had really overwhelmed them a little with his warmth and the patient way he had answered their questions. Where had I found such a friend? she asked.

  “On a baseball field.”

  I heard her laugh softly into the phone. “You should have ducked,” she said. I had told her about the baseball game. She was imitating Danny’s faintly nasal voice. “Isn’t that what he said? You should have ducked.”

  I told her she had a very good memory. “How come your mother took Michael?”

  She had volunteered. There had been no one else to go.

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “I wanted to meet Danny,” she said. Then she said, “My mother has an awful headache from that double feature.”

  “ ‘Messengers for good deeds are never injured,’ ” I said in Hebrew, quoting the Talmud.

  “Only in storybooks,” she said, and we said good night.

  Abraham Gordon called early the next morning. My father spoke with him briefly, then gave me the phone. He had called to thank us again, he said. He and his wife were taking Michael home that morning. He understood I would be at the seminary library helping my father with the book. “Come up to my office and we’ll talk,” he said.

  Ruth Gordon came on the phone. She wanted to thank me and my father, she said. She hoped we would have an opportunity to meet in the city. We had hardly talked yesterday, she said.

  I heard Abraham Gordon calling for Michael.

  “Hello,” Michael said, his voice thin and a little breathless.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “I didn’t meet your friend yesterday. They didn’t want me to meet him.”

  I did not say anything.

  “They’re out of the room,” Michael said. “We can talk. Why didn’t they want me to meet him?”

  I asked him how he had liked the double feature.

  The science-fiction m
ovie had been great, he said. The other had been only so-so. “Why didn’t they want me to meet him?” he said. “I wanted to meet him because he’s your friend. I may never be able to meet him now.”

  I told him there would probably be another chance for him to meet Danny one day. I felt very cold telling him that, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Reuven?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry I acted that way at the carnival. I was terrible. I was terrible afterwards too. I was even a little terrible the first time we went sailing. But I liked the sailing.” He paused. “Will I see you in the city, Reuven?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You can come over and I’ll show you my new telescope. My father is going to help me build a new telescope.” He paused again. “They’re planning something. I can tell they’re planning something. We weren’t supposed to go home today.” He sounded a little panicky.

  “I’ll see you in the city, Michael.”

  “I don’t know what they’re planning. I wish they would tell me what they’re planning.”

  Rachel called me about half an hour later. Michael had gone home with his parents. Her father was driving them home. Could I come over in the afternoon and keep her company? She was not feeling too well, she said.

  We spent the afternoon together. The next day my father finished checking the galleys. For the first time that summer he went down to the beach and spent an afternoon in the sun.

  On the Sunday before Labor Day my father and I went over to Rachel’s house. The five of us were together on the patio most of the afternoon. Sarah Gordon had set up her easel on a corner of the patio and was filling a large canvas with a blinding mixture of colors. She wore a pair of old shorts and a paint-encrusted blouse, and she daubed energetically at the canvas, the palette in one hand, a brush in the other. My father and Joseph Gordon talked gloomily about Senator McCarthy. Rachel and I watched Sarah flinging colors onto the canvas. It was good to be painting again, she said. She hadn’t painted all summer. She hadn’t quite been herself all summer. It was very good to be able to paint again. Later, there was a barbecue. Joseph Gordon stood away from the smoke pouring from the white coals, his pipe between his teeth, tending zealously to the steaks and all the while continuing to talk with my father. It was a very friendly day. We did not once mention Michael.