Doctors (5 page)

Estelle realized it was time for Harold to inform his elder son about the Facts of Life.

Harold was ambivalent—at once proud and afraid—recalling his own father’s introductory lecture three decades earlier. It had
literally
been about the birds and bees, nothing more elevated on the phylogenetic scale. But now
he
would do it properly.

So when Barney arrived home from school a few days later, his father called him into his study.

“Son, I want to talk to you about a serious matter,” he began.

He had carefully planned a Ciceronian exordium using Noah’s Ark, leading up to a peroration on the male and female of the human species. But, experienced pedagogue though he was, he
was unable to sustain the discussion long enough to reach mammalian reproduction.

Finally, in despair, he produced a slim volume,
How You Were Born
, and handed it to Barney, who showed it to Laura at fenceside later that evening.

“God, is this dumb!” she exclaimed, leafing rapidly through the pages. “Couldn’t your father have just told you about how babies were made? Anyway, you’ve known for years.”

“But there are a lot of other things I don’t know about.”

“Like what?”

Barney hesitated. It was one of those rare moments when he was conscious of being separated from Laura by gender.

They were growing up.

T
hey were graduated from public school in June 1950, the year in which the Yankees once again won the World Series, North Korea invaded the South, and antihistamines became available “to cure the common cold” (at least everybody said so but the doctors).

That was also the summer Laura became beautiful.

Almost overnight, her bony shoulders disappeared—as if some supernatural Rodin had smoothed them while she slept. At the same time her high facial bones became more prominent. And her tomboyish gait acquired a sinuous, graceful sensuality. Yet while filling out perfectly in all the right places, she seemed to remain as slender as ever. Even Harold Livingston, who seldom lifted his face from a book, remarked one evening at dinner, “Laura’s become so—I suppose ‘statuesque’ is the word.”

“What about me?” Barney responded with slight indignation.

“I don’t follow, son,” said Harold.

“Haven’t you noticed that I’m
taller
than Laura now?”

His father thought for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you are.”

*    *    *

Midwood High School had the identical red-brick neo-Georgian style with the same proud tower as the halls of Brooklyn College, whose campus it adjoined.

On the wall of its impressive marble lobby was the school motto:

“Gosh, it really kind of inspires you, doesn’t it, Barn?” Laura said, as they stood there looking in awe at those carved words.

“Yeah, I’m especially hoping to grow in body before the basketball tryouts.”

Laura was conspicuous among the freshmen girls for both height and beauty. Very soon, juniors and seniors—some of them hotshot athletes and student leaders—were scampering up the “down” staircase to station themselves in Laura’s path and petition for a date.

These were intoxicating days. Men had suddenly discovered her—boys, anyway. And their persistent attention helped her try to forget that she was once a disappointment to her sex. (“Not only am I ugly,” she had confided to Barney, “I’m so tall everyone in the world can see it.”)

Whereas during their first tentative days at Midwood Barney and Laura ate alone at a table in the cafeteria, she now was so surrounded by upper class suitors that he did not even attempt to join her. (“I’m afraid of getting trampled, Castellano.”)

Barney himself did not make much headway. It seemed the last thing a freshman girl wanted to meet was a freshman
boy.
Like a true Brooklyn Dodger, he would “have to wait till next year.” And be content with daydreaming about the cheerleader captain, Cookie Klein.

Though the Midwood teams were famously unvictorious, there were always great turnouts for the school’s athletic events. Did incurable optimism—or masochism—come with the fluoridation of the Flatbush water?

There was a simpler explanation: The Midwood cheerleaders
were extraordinarily beautiful—a spectacle that more than compensated for the debacle.

So fierce was the competition to become one of them that many girls took extreme measures to be selected. Thus Mandy Sherman spent the fortnight of spring vacation undergoing a rhinoplasty, fervently believing that all she lacked was a perfect nose.

Imagine then Cookie Klein’s consternation when she approached Laura to recruit
her
—and was turned down flat. In a matter of hours, the news had reverberated around the school.

“I mean, everybody’s talking about it,” Barney reported.

Laura shrugged. “I just think it’s stupid, Barn. Who the hell wants to be gawked at in the first place? Anyway, while all those girls are busy practicing their cartwheels, I can be studying.” Then an instant later she added, half to herself, “Besides, I’m really not that pretty.”

He looked at her and shook his head.

“I gotta say this, Castellano—I think you’ve got a screw loose.”

Barney was a dedicated student. Several days a week he got up at five to do some extra cramming so he could use the afternoon for playing ball. Since the official season hadn’t yet begun, many of the Varsity big guns were out scrimmaging in the schoolyard and he wanted to see firsthand what he was up against.

Long after the other players had started for home, in the gathering darkness dispelled only by a street lamp, Barney would continue practicing his jumper, his hook—and finally his foul shot.

Only then would he step onto the Norstrand Avenue trolley and wearily try to study as he rode homeward.

Naturally, he was taking the usual required courses: Math, Civics, English, and General Science. But for his one elective, he had chosen a subject calculated to please his father: Latin.

He loved it—the exhilaration of digging for the Latin roots that made the English language bloom. It made his mental faculties more dexterous (from
mens, facultas
, and
dexter
) and his prose style more concise (from
prosa, stylus
, and
concisus
).

To his delight, all language suddenly became palpable. And, boy, did his vocabulary grow.

He displayed his new verbal pyrotechnicality at every possible moment. When asked by his English teacher if he had
studied hard for the midterm, he replied, “Without dubitation, Miss Simpson, I lucubrated indefatigably.”

But if his dad was flattered, he was not demonstrative about it even when Barney asked him grammatical questions to which he already knew the answer.

He turned to his mother. “What is it, Mom? Isn’t Dad happy that I’m taking Latin?”

“Of course he is. He’s very proud.”

But if Dad had told
her
, Barney thought, how come he didn’t say a word to me?

Then one day he rushed home with his Latin midterm and bolted up the stairs into his father’s study.

“Look, Dad,” he said, breathlessly handing over the examination paper.

Harold took a long puff on his cigarette and began to scrutinize his son’s work. “Ah yes,” he murmured to himself, “I’m reading Virgil this year with my kids as well.” And then more silence.

As Barney waited anxiously, he could not keep himself from adding, “In case you’re wondering, it was the highest in the class.”

His father nodded and then turned to him. “You know, in a way this makes me a little sad.…”

Barney’s mouth suddenly went dry.

“… I mean, I wish I could have had you in my own Latin class.”

Barney never forgot that day, that hour, that moment, those words.

His father liked him after all.

Laura had reached a major—and startling—decision. She mentioned it casually to Barney during the trolley ride from school one day.

“I’m going to run for president.”

“Are you nuts, Castellano? No girl’s ever going to become President of the United States.”

She frowned. “I meant of the class, Barn.”

“That’s still crazy. I mean, there’s only two of us from P.S. 148 in all of Midwood. You won’t have a gang of friends to back you up.”

“I have you.”

“Yeah, but I’m only one vote. And you don’t expect me to stuff the ballot box, do you?”

“But you could help me write a speech. All the candidates get two minutes during one of the class Assembly periods.”

“Do you know who you’re up against?”

“No, but I think I’m the only girl. Now, can you work with me on Sunday afternoon—please?”

“Okay.” He sighed. “I’ll help you make a fool of yourself.”

They rode along for a few minutes, faces buried in their textbooks. Then Barney remarked, “I never dreamed you were this ambitious.”

“I am, Barney,” she confessed in a lowered voice. “I’m ambitious as hell.”

As it turned out, they spent the entire weekend concocting the two minutes that would change the world. At first, they lost a lot of time trying to dream up extravagant campaign promises (free class outings to Coney Island, etc.). Barney finally came to the conclusion that politics at any level is essentially an exercise in making the mendacious sound veracious. In other words, being a convincing liar.

And he was shameless enough to urge Laura to make ample use of that most Machiavellian of words—“integrity.”

At Assembly, after three sweating, madly gesticulating candidates had almost set the packed auditorium to laughing with their bombast, Laura’s calm and deliberate walk to the podium (Barney had even rehearsed her in that) made an astonishing contrast.

She spoke in soft unhurried tones, now and then pausing—partly for effect and partly because she was so frightened she could barely breathe.

Equally dramatic was the contrast between her speech and those preceding. Simply stated, she said that she was as new to Midwood as she had been to America but a few years ago. She appreciated the warmth of her schoolmates as she appreciated the country that had welcomed her. And the only way she could imagine repaying the debt for all she had received was by public service. If elected, she could promise them no miracles, no pie in the sky, no convertibles for every garage (laughter). All she had to offer was integrity.

The applause was muted. Not because her classmates were unimpressed, but because the sheer artlessness of her words, her manifest
integrity
, and—it cannot be denied—her striking good looks had bedazzled them.

Indeed, by the time the Assembly ended and all were
singing the alma mater, her election seemed a foregone conclusion. The homeward ride lacked only the ticker tape.

“You did it, Castellano. It was a total shutout. I’ll bet you’ll be president of the whole school some day.”

“No, Barney,” she answered affectionately, “
you
did it—you wrote practically my whole speech.”

“Come on, I only made up some bullshit. It was the
way
you performed out there that was the real kayo punch.”

“Okay, okay.
We
did it.”

That summer, the Castellanos and the Livingstons rented a small house a block from the beach in Neponset, Long Island. There they stayed, breathing healthy sea air, while Luis came out to join them only on the weekends. He was always in a state of semi-exhaustion from the terrible annual battle against polio.

And, of course, for Inez the talk of possible epidemics and the sight of young children playing happily on the beach brought back—though they were never far away—the memories of her little Isobel. If only they had gone to the seashore
then.

She would stare off into the ocean while Harold and Estelle sat with their faces buried in a book—Estelle reading
Pride and Prejudice
and Harold rereading Syme’s
Roman Revolution.

Meanwhile, an innocently seductive Laura joined her teenage girlfriends running and diving into the waves. And every lifeguard who took his turn on the high wooden seat silently prayed that she would call for
his
help.

Of course, there were dates. Young, bronzed suitors in their parents’ Studebakers or DeSotos sought eagerly to take Laura to drive-in movies, or starlit barbecues on the deserted beach.

And necking.

Parking in a tranquil spot “to watch the submarines” or other euphemistic terms for making out—while on the radio Nat King Cole crooned “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.”

Late one sultry August evening, Sheldon Harris put his hand on Laura’s breast. She said, “No, don’t.” But did not really mean it. Yet when he tried to slip his hand inside her blouse, she once again said no. And meant it.

Barney had no time for such frivolity. Early each morning he would wolf down breakfast and start along the still-empty shore, carrying his sneakers (so they wouldn’t get sandy) to Riis Park, where games of basketball went on around the clock.

Time was running short. In a mere sixty-one days he would be trying out for the Midwood Varsity. Nothing could be left to
chance. He even consulted Dr. Castellano on what foods would be most likely to induce growth. (“Try eating lunch, to start with,” Luis advised.) Barney’s nutritional campaign was supplemented by periodic sessions on the Riis Park chinning bars. He would hang for as long as he could bear it, hoping his body would stretch in the right direction. On the eve of Labor Day 1951, Barney stood up as straight as possible against the white stucco wall of the porch as independent measurements were taken by Harold and Luis.

The results were spectacular: one tape read six feet and a quarter inch, the other six and three-eighths. He whooped for joy. Laura (who had earlier learned to her great relief that she’d finally stopped growing at five-ten) and Warren (five-four) stood by and clapped.

“I made it, guys, I made it!” Barney squealed, jumping around the room like a rabbit with a hotfoot.