Drunken Angel (9781936740062) (38 page)

I died of happiness. Had to restrain myself from shouting joyfully. Against my body, hers, which in part had come of me, emanated an essential distillation of familiarity unavailable anywhere on earth except from her in relation to me. She was my little girl and I was her daddy. Breath of my breath. Love of my love.

Esther didn't like it. “Izzy,” she snapped, “Stop bothering your fa-ther. It's hot!”

I put my arm around Izzy, as if to hold her in place. “No,” I said. “She's fine.”

But Izzy slipped away and stood off to the side, apart from the table, and began to play some mental game with herself and hop around. I was fine now. Knew that she was thinking about me, a thousand thoughts, and about other things probably, her friends, and whom she would tell about me first and what she would say and
how to describe me. Intuited all this immediately, relaxed. It was going to be fine.

Let Esther talk as long as she liked; I heard none of it. Finally, when she had spent herself—talk was her way of staying calm—she said: “What now?”

I suggested that we take some photographs. Sensed how important it was that Isadora experience a moment, if ever so briefly, of normal family life, like posing together for photographs, to break the ice of her estrangement not only from me but from any sense whatsoever of sane family closeness.

“Izzy,” I said. “For a proper photo, you should sit on Daddy's shoulders.”

Her face lit up. “Okay, Daddy.”

I offered her a hand up, and effortlessly, like a little monkey, she swung onto my back and carefully placed one leg after the other over my shoulders as I held her firmly. Laughing, she blindfolded my eyes with her hands and I pretended to stumble around confused and teeter on the brink while she held fast, squealing and laughing.

Esther shot some photos of us, and then Izzy came down and Esther asked someone to shoot all three of us, as I took note of how my emotions protested against appearing in a picture with her, an idea as repugnant to me as ever—I evidently had not forgiven her enough even to pretend to allow a relationship, and perhaps she sensed this, perhaps in this I failed to maintain my spiritual stance. For though I intended to speak with her in private, to make amends face to face about the wrongs I had done, I also wanted her to be very clear that my only reason to be here was Isadora. I did not quite grasp that she, in turn, wanted me to understand that she controlled Isadora's every breath and step—that nothing I could do would take her away. As if that had been my intention, then or ever.

“Would you like to come see where we live?” said Esther.

It was more than I dared to hope for.

“I'd be honored,” I said.

“You won't feel so honored when you see the dump we live in.” She was right. It was awful. The building sat, old and ugly, in a neighborhood overrun with feral cats where laundry flapped on outdoor clotheslines amid knee-high weeds.

A large balcony thrust from the flat like a pouting lip. This was heaped with a compacted avalanche of discarded clothes, photos, hairbrushes, newspapers, and anthologies containing my poems, mangled into rain-twisted mulch. Clothes, books, shoes, dinner plates were strewn everywhere throughout the flat. It looked as if some biblical flood had hit, then abated, and everything it destroyed was left as is.

 

I wanted to buy something for Isadora. The Casio piano had flopped, I could tell, as well it should have: there was nothing of me in it. Would Esther permit me to go off alone with my daughter to shop in the local mall? I asked nervously, remembering the pitched battles that Esther had waged in the past when I tried to take Isadora out in the stroller for a walk through Brooklyn's shady Park Slope streets. Feared sparking more of her paranoia. But something in my manner reassured her. Amazingly, she agreed. The sober man had calmed the skittish fox. Hand in hand with my daughter I left the flat, unescorted, unmonitored, just she and I.

Air and light returned to the planet's surface. I walked along, smiling, as Isadora skipped ahead and turned frequently to see if I was still really there and not some mirage that might dematerialize back into the sad surroundings. I'm still here, sweetheart! my smile signaled. Not going anywhere. Just with you. I love you!

In the mall, everything was closed. We found a single store open,
from which we came away with a small fishing rod. Isadora had told me of her great fondness for beaches and water, but this gift, too, was all wrong. She led me to her favorite haunt, a huge ugly manufacturing plant with chemical-green pools that Isadora traversed by means of plank bridges, and then to the shore, to shoals and tide pools where she squatted, pointing out the various sea-life amusements, starfish and anemones and shells—and then we walked hand in hand down the beach. It seemed like the right time to bring up the amends that I had come to make, even though I was already living it just by being here. Still, some words, I felt, were in order.

“Izzy, do you know what an alcoholic is?”

“No,” she said, quickly shaking her head without meeting my eyes.

“It's someone who gets very, very sick, and also crazy, when they drink beer or wine or brandy or whiskey. Anything with alcohol in it. So, they call such a person an alcoholic.”

She now stared at me with interest.

“It makes them so sick that they could die, but they can't stop drinking it.”

“Are you an alcoholic?” she asked.

Sharp kid!

“Yes, yes, I am. And that's the reason why you haven't seen me all these years. I've been very, very sick and trying very hard to get well.”

“Are you better?”

“Yes, I think I am.”

“So, are you going to stay now with me and Mommy?”

“Your mother and I are only friends now. We're not married anymore. I'm your father, and for as long as you let me, I promise to be in your life.”

“Then why do you have to go? Why can't you stay?”

“Well, I've got a home and a girlfriend and all my friends and a career in San Francisco. My whole life is there now, except for you.”

“Why don't you live in Israel?”

“I love Israel, Izzy. But I'm a writer in English. To do what I do, I really need to be there, where English is spoken and written.”

“But you could if you wanted.”

“The best would be if I could live some of the time here and some there. But I'm afraid I don't have that kind of money.”

“Why don't you get the money?”

I closed my eyes, said a little prayer to know what to say, how to answer. And the answer was to be who I really am, as truthful as I could be. Never to lie to her, even if I didn't come out looking the way I'd like her to see me.

“I can't seem to, Izzy. I try, but I have a long way to go. I'm a writer and I don't make much money at it and I'm still learning. I'm doing the best I know how. But I need a lot more time.

She thought about it. And then she said, “But Mummy said you were a soldier in the IDF? Were you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I was.”

She looked extremely proud of me and said: “You're Alan Kaufman! You can do anything!” and with her little hand slapped the small of my back encouragingly.

There is no greater encouragement in life than your own daughter's belief in you.

“Thank you, sweetheart. We'll see. I'll try. I swear, I will.”

“Promise!”

“I promise!”

She was so happy that she danced spinning over the sand with arms outflung against the sunset, a bronze-fired silhouette, and I felt that I had made the verbal amends that I had come for, and
that now, in earnest, the living part of the amends could really commence, for a relationship had been established between her and me. Never again would I disappear from her life. From here on, we would be in whatever kind of communication life and circumstances would allow, and through it all she would know: she has a father who loves her.

I TRAVELED BACK TO JERUSALEM THAT NIGHT, promising to return first thing the next day. Izzy looked so stricken when I departed. I made sure to call when I got back, to let her know that I was thinking of her. Esther put her on the phone and we talked for a long time.

That night, I went to a 12-step meeting, my first in Israel, where often they are held in unused bomb shelters that serve when full-scale war erupts but then revert back to community centers in less threatening times. This one, though, was held in a rehab clinic. All kinds of people showed up to the meeting, including a religious Jew and an Israeli Arab. Wherever one stood in the complex spectrum of life, one left it at the meeting door. Alcoholism and drug addiction are the great equalizers, reducing all to the same common denominator: a dying human whose body and mind no longer make life viable and who, regardless of social station, religion, or politics, must reach out to others in recovery for survival and must find a Higher Power through pursuit of a spiritual life
grounded in love, unity, and service.

When I told of my purpose in coming to Israel, to make amends to my daughter, they all nodded approvingly and spoke of the great example that I was setting for them.

The religious Jew said: “You have the willingness to go halfway around the world to set things straight. That is willingness to go to any length to stay sober. But also, it shows a certain truth about life. The more sober you get, the more clearly you feel, the more you want to see your Isadora. Love keeps pushing to the surface. And moving you to do what is right. That is what I called God.”

The Israeli Arab spoke of his estrangement from his family, whom he had dishonored and abandoned. My story gave him hope that if he stayed sober he may yet sit to table with them.

“May Allah make it so,” said the religious Jew.

At meeting's end, we all joined hands and heads lowered, said the Serenity Prayer.

 

The next morning, I arrived in Ashdod and hurried to Isadora. A short, slender, swarthy man in house slippers let me in. Esther introduced him as Yaacov, a Bosnian refugee working in construction. We shook hands.

“He's my lover,” she said in the kitchen as Yaacov descended to the outdoor trash receptacles with a bag of garbage.

“Good for you,” I said. “How do he and Izzy get along?”

“They love each other.”

“Great!” I said.

He seemed nice enough, nondescript, plainspoken, pleasant smile. Isadora appeared a little awkward around him, not as loving as Esther claimed, but I saw no special significance in this. I wanted to be alone with my daughter, but Esther insisted that we all remain together, and so we did. There was no chance of one-on-one
communication with Isadora. We went out to the seaside and walked around eating ices, taking in the festive, bustling oceanfront scene. That evening, they insisted that I sleep over rather than return on the late bus to Jerusalem. Isadora couldn't bear the thought of my going. Of course I agreed.

I was to sleep on the kitchen floor, where I curled on a blanket amid caked cat food, hairballs, and dust. I would have slept on a bed of hot coals to be near her. Later in the evening, Esther decided to sleep with Isadora and I should come off the floor to share the large living-room sofa bed with Yaacov. I complied.

Yaacov and I made some stilted small talk before he dozed. I lay awake, thinking of Izzy, wondering how she was, grieving a little to find her in such squalor. What a mess. An alcoholic father, a mentally unbalanced mother, and on both sides penniless bohemians.

She appeared, whispering on bare feet out of the dark to the foot of the bed, and crawled in and cuddled up against me. I encircled her with my arm, heart pounding, held her. My little daughter. My Isadora. This I could give her, the sense of me, my speechless, wordless love. My warmth. The love of my bones and blood. My adult solidity and protection. This I could give, regardless of my empty bank account. It did not add up in dollars and cents. Just breathe, I told myself, and let her breathe beside you. That's enough.

It was more than I could have hoped for. I prayed: God, watch over this child. Give me strength to be her father, to stay sober, and give her strength to live despite all.

Just then, Yaacov stirred. Izzy's body froze. She went completely cold. He said: “Izzy?” and she slipped away, disappeared.

The next day, she insisted, to my extreme joy, that I take her to school. Off we went, hand in hand, she with her little backpack, pointing out things special to her in the run-down landscape: a
playground where she and her friends liked to go, certain cats she had named, places where friends lived. At the school she released my hand and said: “Come in with me. To meet my teacher.”

“I will, sweetheart. I'm just going to stand out here for a moment, okay? And I'll be right in.”

She trundled down the path, her little backpack on her shoulders. I paused to watch her, overcome with sorrow, grief, to realize all the days of her life that I had missed, the special occasions, the first day at school, school plays, performances, sports events, bake sales. How many days of seeing her in her little backpack had I missed? They haunted me, embodied ghosts of lost, wasted years—a black hole. I hung my head and wept to think of it. And waited for the fierce sun of Israel to dry my tears before entering.

The teacher stood to receive me. “How is your Hebrew?” she asked in English.

“My speaking level is good.”

“Welcome,” she said in Hebrew.

Isadora turned to the owl-eyed curious class and said boldly, standing beside me: “This is my father, Alan, from San Francisco. He was an IDF soldier.”

In Israel, every father is a soldier, serves in the army. It is a sign of normalcy, and my having served normalized her in their eyes, was one less way in which she would have to feel different.