Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (26 page)

Like most monumental building projects, the construction of the castle was plagued by cost overruns, accidents, and labor disputes. Misapplied clay slid off the cardboard base. Misplaced footsteps—some
purposely
misplaced by angry brothers—caused further damage, while arguments over tools and methods led to wrestling matches and stockouts of balsa wood at Tom Thumb crafts store delayed completion.
Fortunately I was big enough to prevent my brothers from destroying the castle, and my parents, acting like some municipal bonding authority, happily covered the expense of repairs, alterations, and additions to the project.

When it was finished, the castle was eased into the back of the family station wagon and my mother drove it very slowly over to Romona School. Everyone was impressed as Mitch and I carried the castle into the school. The A-plus grade was satisfying but we felt especially proud when we were asked to put our project on display at a district learning center. For months we heard that people were inspecting the project with great care and admiration. The idea that you could get such recognition from the community for academic work was a major revelation for me. Equally inspiring, for all three of us, was the notion that anyone—including a kid—could conceive of something ambitious, marshal resources, and with a concentrated effort achieve some success.

After the castle project, Jack got the idea to build a rudimentary computer based on a plan he saw in
Scientific American
. A bit of delicate soldering was required, but the real work involved going to Radio Shack and hardware stores for the switches and other components. My mother was happy to accommodate us, and in short order we had the contraption built and running. Basically a set of switches and a battery glued to a board and connected by wires, the device was more like a humongous if crude calculator than a computer, but it was more sophisticated than anything we had ever seen.

As the family geek, I got the most out of projects like the calculator/computer, but when they found something they wanted to pursue Ari and Rahm got similar backing. In Rahm’s case, his major interest was a bit surprising. He was keenly sensitive to any slights based on his height, age, or masculinity, which is why we were all taken aback when he decided to take up, in earnest, the art of the dance.

It started with my mother’s decision to make us all take ballet lessons. His 1960 bar mitzvah injury notwithstanding, our father was a terrific
dancer, and our parents were always the dancing hit of any Jewish celebration. Our mother figured that it would be a good skill for us to possess, too. But for reasons that have been lost to time, she signed us up not for ballroom or modern dance, but for introductory ballet.

Our dance school occupied a big space above the Rexall drugstore at the Edens Plaza shopping center, which was about a mile and a half from our home. It was run by an enterprising male dance teacher who had outfitted it with a smooth wooden floor, mirrors, and ballet barres. He seemed to promise the parents of Wilmette that he could turn their children into stars. More like tumbling, biting bear cubs than fleet-footed antelopes, Ari, Rahm, and I would have preferred to study karate or jujitsu but there was no way we could escape the dance studio. To our relief, the three of us had a private lesson each week, which spared us from the judgment of other kids.

Ari would later confess that the dance lessons at Edens Plaza helped him in sports. I did not make enough progress to be considered coordinated or elegant, but I learned enough to enjoy myself at bar mitzvahs and parties through my high school years. But neither of us enjoyed going to those lessons. Quite the contrary. We hated the black tights and ballet shoes we were required to wear and dreaded being seen going in or out of the dance studio. Whenever we were spied by classmates or friends we had to endure their taunts. Once Ari chased a boy down the sidewalk and beat him until he cried for mercy after he asked if we had remembered to bring our tutus.

After a year devoted to learning the first through fifth positions and other moves, Ari and I had had enough and were permitted to quit. Rahm, to everyone’s surprise, stuck with it.

For the next six years, Rahm endured teasing from friends and classmates and risked being spotted in his tights, in order to learn and master ever-more-challenging elements of dance. He progressed rather quickly, showing that he had the strength and natural athletic ability to perform impressive leaps and lifts and the discipline to accept criticism and endure the physical pain that comes with ballet. My mother loved that Rahm found something to pour himself into, something that helped him to distinguish himself. But she also reminded
him that his ability “is a gift from God. It’s not for you to keep, but to share” through performance.

As strong as he may have been, Rahm was still very small for his age. Ari and I made a point of watching out for trouble from anyone who even thought about making fun of him. This did not mean we foreswore teasing him ourselves, or even suggesting from time to time that he might be ready for a new tutu. What’s a brother for? But where outsiders were concerned, we were extremely protective and made it clear that anyone who bothered him would have to deal with us.

When he outgrew the ballet school over the Rexall pharmacy, my parents transferred him to a studio in Evanston, where he could get more advanced coaching from a locally famous teacher named Gus Giordano. Working with Gus, Rahm developed strength, stamina, and a kind of grace that was evident even when he wasn’t performing. The way he walked, and even the way he occupied space in a room, changed in ways that made him seem more substantial and more confident despite his relatively short stature. This was, no doubt, the benefit my parents were imagining as they supported the lessons and attended his performances. Ballet was an art form but it was also a way to build discipline and character.

By the time Rahm reached high school, he was good enough, and confident enough, to let anyone know that he was passionate about dance. With Ari helping to police the knuckleheads, he got much positive reinforcement for his efforts, and he did both choreography and performances in high school. Rahm’s crowd of friends included lots of kids who were interested in theater, music, and dance, but he also enjoyed a brief stint as a soccer player. I think he gravitated toward the game because it was the one sport we had played with our dad.

Although Rahm wouldn’t have a long run in varsity sports, he got all the family support he needed to make steady progress with Gus Giordano and make a lasting impression on the stage at school. I received similar backing for every interest I ever expressed. One example of this involved a cow heart, with lungs attached, that my grandfather Herman acquired somewhere in his wanderings through butcher shops and delivered to me wrapped in white, waxy butcher paper. My parents
allowed me to dissect these organs on a card table that I set up in the family room and covered with plastic. Most of the time I performed this cardiac surgery with my friend Jerry Glass. We would make slices here and there and compare what we saw to anatomical drawings of the human heart and the plastic models that my father brought home from his office. But even though he gave us tools and anatomical aids, my father did not coach us through this work or even discuss it with us. He left it to us to find out how the valves worked, discover the artery opening, and trace the vessels that move blood to the lungs and back to the left atrium.

While I played surgeon and Rahm required frequent taxi service to rendezvous with beautiful ballerinas, Ari made very few requests for help with any of his interests. This was probably because he already spent more than enough time with my mother working on academic skills. Hyperactive to the point where he literally shook as he struggled to sit still, Ari nevertheless managed to wait as my mother spread flour on a silver tray she had received as a wedding gift and then took his hand in hers to trace the letters of the alphabet. An invention of her own design, the flour tray was intended to give my brother some physical sensation to match the appearance of the letters on paper.

The pressure Ari felt as my mother coached him was matched by the embarrassment he experienced whenever he was in a situation that required him to read out loud. When everyone at synagogue picked up their prayer books to read some passage in English, Ari stared at the page and hoped no one would notice that he couldn’t participate. Sometimes he would attempt to recite, listening carefully and then voicing the words a split second after he heard them. I recall being perplexed by his struggle. No one in our family could spell worth a damn. I was always the first one out in spelling bees at school. But Ari couldn’t read even a few sentences out loud. He had similar experiences in school. If a teacher ever told him he would have to read out loud the next day, he would spend hours practicing the night before, hoping to memorize the words so he wouldn’t have to actually follow the text.

Dependent on others for extra help with academics, Ari made it a
point to go it alone in many of his extracurricular pursuits, most of which involved moneymaking ventures. The first was probably the sale of our mother’s cheesecake, which she prepared on a weekly basis and included in our school lunches. The cake was almost achingly good, but Ari had the discipline to be satisfied with the piece he had with dinner so that he could sell his next day’s portion at school to the highest bidder. My mother did not have any idea this was going on until a neighbor telephoned to ask her to supply her with an entire cheesecake for a party. For a moment she thought this request was part of the suburban subculture—maybe she could ask Mrs. Grant for a pot roast—but then the caller asked her for a price.

“How much do I charge?” she asked incredulously. “What gave you the idea that I sell cheesecakes?”

Once the two women stopped laughing, my mother had to say she felt a bit encouraged by Ari’s initiative. She also insisted on making one of her cakes and delivering it to our neighbor as a gift. Soon after this little retail adventure, Ari showed more entrepreneurial potential as he drafted Rahm and me and some other boys as laborers to do yard work while he kept a cut of the proceeds for himself. These little businesses required a degree of planning and organization that stood in stark relief to Ari’s struggles at school and his many conflicts with our father.

No one would ever question our father’s devotion or skill as a parent, but Ari, the youngest shavov, certainly challenged his patience. In some instances he deliberately tried to get my father’s goat. At every restaurant, for instance, he would scan the menu to identify the most expensive appetizer, entrée, and dessert, and order them all. This habit was partly connected to his dyslexia. He had trouble reading menus and he found it easier just to look for the higher prices, which he anticipated were associated with the better dishes.

In other cases, Ari really could not help but be annoying. No matter what day of the week it happened to be, or whether school was in session or not, he was always awake by 5
A.M
. Jittery and anxious, he could not stay in bed, and he would prowl around the house looking for something to occupy his mind and help him burn off excess energy.

Although he tried to be quiet, inevitably Ari would awaken Rahm, or me, or worse, my father on a morning when he was trying to recover some of the sleep he lost during a busy workweek. To his credit, our father understood that Ari was just too energized to control himself. He was less sanguine about the harassment and goofing around that Ari practiced as he got older and learned the fine art of persistent and intentional irritation.

Typically these elaborate episodes involved something as mundane as a television-channel-changing contest. These began with my father, home after a long, hard day at work, descending into the family room and stretching out on the sofa to watch something on channel 11, Chicago’s public television station. Ari would waltz into the family room and change the channel. In these days before remote controls, my father would have to command Ari to restore his program of choice, or else would have to get up from the sofa, walk across the room, and do it himself.

One day Ari switched the TV to
All Star Wrestling
on channel 32. My father got up and flipped the channel back to 11. Just as my father sat down on the sofa, Ari reached up from his spot on the floor and flipped it back to channel 32. My father then got up and changed it back to channel 11. Ari waited again and as my father sat he flipped the channel.

Thirty-two.

Eleven.

Thirty-two.

Eleven.

Seated nearby, Rahm the peacemaker laughed nervously to encourage my father to see the humor in the situation, all the while praying that his little brother would stop before he crossed that imaginary line and reached my father’s breaking point.

As Ari continued to defy him, my father finally warned, “You better stop it now!”

Ari should have known better than to risk one more flip. He did not. “Gudt-dammit!” my father cried, and leaped off the sofa. Ari dashed up the stairs to the kitchen. My father gave chase. Rahm followed.
Hearing the commotion, I came out of my room just in time to see our father chasing Ari through the kitchen, where my dad picked up a large carving knife and shouted something about how Ari better not let himself get caught.