blessings amid the animals in their fecundity, and invited to enjoy the reality of them, which I fervently did.
But the truest and most daring expeditions of spring were mounted by my father, whose restlessness drew us ever outward. Usually on Sundays he preferred to visit his mother andfather, my grandma and grandpa, who lived north of Kingsbridge Road on the Grand Concourse. But in this season he was too much with the fullness of himself and his good feeling to do the ordinary thing. And so one Sunday we went to the tennis courts on Morris Avenue and 167th Street—a good walk—and he played tennis first with my mother, hitting the white ball back and forth over the net, and later with Donald, whom he instructed in the forehand and backhand strokes. “That’s the way,” he said. “Good. Good one.” I was too small to hold the wood racket with one hand. When my turn came, I hit with it as if I held a baseball bat. I didn’t want to do it long because I was afraid of hitting the ball into another court and disturbing someone. “Don’t worry about that,” my father said. I thought he looked splendid in his white ducks and shirt and tennis shoes, his dark eyes flashing as he lunged this way and that to stroke the ball. It seemed effortless as he did it, he was always where the ball was. “You’ve got to bend your knees,” he said. “You’ve got to anticipate. Keep your side toward the net. Bring the racket back, and when you swing, follow through.” I was having too good a time to listen carefully. My mother played well; although she didn’t move quite as fast as my dad, she hit the ball smartly and it flew right back to him. She was not awkward as you would expect a girl to be. She wore a white dress and a sunshade tied around her hair, and white ankle socks with her shoes.
There were many courts. I counted twelve. Around the entire compound was a fence of chicken wire. The courts were red clay and made the bottom of my socks red. The white lines were whitewashed on with lime and had to be redone by the court attendant because they were rubbed out by the players’ shoes.
My father was always rousing us up to do things. It was his idea to persuade his friend Dr. Perlman, the family dentist who lived in the apartment house across the street, and who owned a car, that the two families should have a picnic in the country. And so we did. I did not relish the drive sitting on my mother’slap in the back of Dr. Perlman’s black Plymouth. I didn’t know if it was true of all Plymouths, but it certainly was of Dr. Perlman’s, that it seemed designed to lurch and jerk and drift and lurch again but never to travel at a steady rate. Somewhere on the Saw Mill River Parkway north of the Bronx, my green color was noted, and I was dumped over the back of the front seat to sit up there with my father and Donald, the little front swivel window pushed out wide to give me the breeze.
But then we were out in the country, as far out as I had ever been in my life. The country was an endless pathless park. We were in a broad meadow of millions of buttercups. We ran races in the sun, Donald and I and the Perlmans’ boy, Jay, who was a bit younger than I but taller and stronger, which did not endear him to me. My father called the races with a newspaper rolled up as a megaphone and my beret on the top of his head. His vest was open, his jacket lay on the ground. My mother and Mrs. Perlman, a woman with a limp, and Mae Barsky, sat on blankets in the shade of a tree and set out the sandwiches and fruit and lemonade. Donald took home movies with our Universal camera. My father throws a ball at the camera. My father bats. My father stands facing Dr. Perlman, a big horse-faced man with rimless glasses, and he waves his arms in a hocus-pocus circle and points his two index fingers and Dr. Perlman disppears. Someone has produced ice cream and I am eating a Melorol happily, smears of it all over my mouth. I smile and wave at the
But the truest and most daring expeditions of spring were mounted by my father, whose restlessness drew us ever outward. Usually on Sundays he preferred to visit his mother andfather, my grandma and grandpa, who lived north of Kingsbridge Road on the Grand Concourse. But in this season he was too much with the fullness of himself and his good feeling to do the ordinary thing. And so one Sunday we went to the tennis courts on Morris Avenue and 167th Street—a good walk—and he played tennis first with my mother, hitting the white ball back and forth over the net, and later with Donald, whom he instructed in the forehand and backhand strokes. “That’s the way,” he said. “Good. Good one.” I was too small to hold the wood racket with one hand. When my turn came, I hit with it as if I held a baseball bat. I didn’t want to do it long because I was afraid of hitting the ball into another court and disturbing someone. “Don’t worry about that,” my father said. I thought he looked splendid in his white ducks and shirt and tennis shoes, his dark eyes flashing as he lunged this way and that to stroke the ball. It seemed effortless as he did it, he was always where the ball was. “You’ve got to bend your knees,” he said. “You’ve got to anticipate. Keep your side toward the net. Bring the racket back, and when you swing, follow through.” I was having too good a time to listen carefully. My mother played well; although she didn’t move quite as fast as my dad, she hit the ball smartly and it flew right back to him. She was not awkward as you would expect a girl to be. She wore a white dress and a sunshade tied around her hair, and white ankle socks with her shoes.
There were many courts. I counted twelve. Around the entire compound was a fence of chicken wire. The courts were red clay and made the bottom of my socks red. The white lines were whitewashed on with lime and had to be redone by the court attendant because they were rubbed out by the players’ shoes.
My father was always rousing us up to do things. It was his idea to persuade his friend Dr. Perlman, the family dentist who lived in the apartment house across the street, and who owned a car, that the two families should have a picnic in the country. And so we did. I did not relish the drive sitting on my mother’slap in the back of Dr. Perlman’s black Plymouth. I didn’t know if it was true of all Plymouths, but it certainly was of Dr. Perlman’s, that it seemed designed to lurch and jerk and drift and lurch again but never to travel at a steady rate. Somewhere on the Saw Mill River Parkway north of the Bronx, my green color was noted, and I was dumped over the back of the front seat to sit up there with my father and Donald, the little front swivel window pushed out wide to give me the breeze.
But then we were out in the country, as far out as I had ever been in my life. The country was an endless pathless park. We were in a broad meadow of millions of buttercups. We ran races in the sun, Donald and I and the Perlmans’ boy, Jay, who was a bit younger than I but taller and stronger, which did not endear him to me. My father called the races with a newspaper rolled up as a megaphone and my beret on the top of his head. His vest was open, his jacket lay on the ground. My mother and Mrs. Perlman, a woman with a limp, and Mae Barsky, sat on blankets in the shade of a tree and set out the sandwiches and fruit and lemonade. Donald took home movies with our Universal camera. My father throws a ball at the camera. My father bats. My father stands facing Dr. Perlman, a big horse-faced man with rimless glasses, and he waves his arms in a hocus-pocus circle and points his two index fingers and Dr. Perlman disppears. Someone has produced ice cream and I am eating a Melorol happily, smears of it all over my mouth. I smile and wave at the
Similar Books
