Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction (87 page)

I curled up on the baby-blue bedspread in my home in Glen Rock, New Jersey, a magnifying glass in my teenage hand. Slowly I scanned the glass across black-and-white photographs of Pat Boone in the latest issue of
Life
magazine. In one, he, his wife, Shirley, and four daughters perch on a tandem bicycle in front of their New Jersey home, not many miles from my own. I was particularly drawn to the whiteness of the photos. Pat Boone’s white-white teeth beamed at me, his white bucks spotless. I savored each cell of his being, each molecule, as I traced my finger across his magnified image. I believed I felt skin, the pale hairs on his forearms. Only a membrane of paper separated me from a slick fingernail, a perfectly shaped ear, the iris of his eye. Surely the wind gusted his hair, his family’s hair, but in the photograph all movement was frozen, the bicycle wheels stationary, never to speed away from me. The family itself was in tandem, legs pumping in perfect, still arcs. It was this crisp, clean, unchanging certainty that I craved.

The hands on his wristwatch were stopped at 3:40. I glanced at my own watch, almost 3:40. I didn’t move, waiting for the minute hand to reach the eight, as if I could will time itself to stop, entranced by the notion that we would both endlessly exist in this same segment of time. For even as I tumbled inside the photograph, we remained static on this one particular day, suspended at 3:40…trapped together, me on the tandem bike directly behind him, leaning toward him. Now inside the black-and-white photo, I see lilacs, maple trees, shutters on the windows. But I’m never distracted by scents or colors. I never inhale the Ivory soap of his shirt, never sense warm friction of rubber beneath the wheels of the bike, never have to feel loss or know that seasons change. My ponytail, streaming behind my back, is frozen, captured with him and his family — now my consistent and constantly loving family.

For hours I fantasized living inside this black-and-white print, unreachable. This immaculate universe was safe, far away from my father’s messy flesh-and-blood hands, hands that hurt me at night.

Through my bedroom window, sun glinted off the glass I held inches from his face. Round magnifier. Beam of light. Halo. I placed my hand, fingers spread, beneath the glass, hovering just above the paper, as if glass, hand, photograph, him — all existed in disembodied heavenly light.

As the bus rumbled across the George Washington Bridge, over the Hudson River, I clutched a ticket to his television show in one hand, a copy of his book,
’Twixt Twelve and Twenty
, in the other. Silently, I sang the words, his words, with which he closed his weekly program, “See the USA in your Chevrolet,” a show I watched religiously on our black-and-white Zenith. With the darkness of New Jersey behind me, the gleaming lights of Manhattan before me, I felt as if I myself were a photograph slowly being developed into a new life. In just an hour I would see him. I wanted to be with him — be his wife, lover, daughter, houseguest, girlfriend, best friend, pet. Interchangeable. Any one of these relationships would do.

Sitting in the studio during the show, I waited for it to end. Mainly, I waited for the time when we would meet. Yes, I suppose I loved his voice, his music. At least, if asked, I would claim to love his songs. What else could I say since there was no language at that moment to specify what I most needed from Pat Boone? How could I explain to him — to anybody — that if I held that magnifying glass over my skin, I would see my father’s fingerprints? I would see skin stained with shame. I would see a girl who seemed marked by her very Jewishness. Since my Jewish father misloved me, what I needed in order to be saved was an audience with Pat Boone.

Here in this audience, I was surrounded by girls crying and screaming his name. But I was different from these fans. Surely he knew this, too, sensed my silent presence, the secret life we shared. Soon, I no longer heard the girls, no longer noticed television cameras, cue cards, musicians. No longer even heard his voice or which song he sang. All I saw was his face suffused in a spotlight, one beam that seemed to emanate from a darkened sky.

After the show, I queued up with other fans outside the stage door. I waited with my Aqua Net–flipped hair, Peter Pan collar, circle pin, penny loafers. Slowly the line inched forward, girls seeking autographs.

But when I reached him, I was too startled to speak. Now I faced him in living color. Pink shirt. Brown hair. Suede jacket. His tan hands moved; his brown eyes actually blinked. I could see him breathe. I forgot my carefully rehearsed words: “Will you adopt me?”

Besides, if I spoke, I feared he wouldn’t even hear me. My voice would be too low, too dim, too insignificant, too tainted. He would know I was too distant to be saved. I felt as if I’d fallen so far from that photograph that my own image was out of focus. I was a blur, a smudged Jewish blur of a girl, mesmerized by a golden cross, an amulet on a chain around his neck. Speechless, I continued to stand, unmoving, holding up the line. Finally he smiled and asked, “Is that for me?” He gestured toward the book. I held it out to him. Quickly he scrawled his name.

Later, alone in my bedroom, lying on my blue bedspread, I trailed a fingertip over his autograph. I spent days learning to copy his signature. I traced it, duplicated it. Using black India ink, I forged the name “Pat Boone” on my school notebooks. I wrote his name on my white Keds with a ballpoint pen. At the Jersey Shore I scrawled my own love letters in the sand. But I had missed my chance to speak to him. For years those words I wanted to say remained unspoken.

Now, watching him through binoculars in the Calvary Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan, I again scan every cell of his face, his neck. I’m sure I can observe individual molecules in his fingers, palms, hands, wrists. He wears a gold pinkie ring, a gold-link bracelet. And a watch! That watch? I wonder if it’s the same 3:40 watch. In his presence I am once again tranced — almost as if we’ve been in a state of suspension together all this time.

He doesn’t even appear to have aged — much. Boyish good looks, brown hair. Yet this grandfather sings his golden oldies, tributes to innocence and teenage love: “Bernadine,” “Love Letters in the Sand,” “Moody River,” “Friendly Persuasion,” “Tutti Frutti.” His newer songs are about God and country. Well, he sings, after all, to a white Christian audience, mainly elderly church ladies with tight gray curls, pastel pantsuits, sensible shoes. I know I am the only one here who voted for President Clinton, who wears open-toed sandals, who doesn’t believe in God. But nothing deters me. I feel almost like that teenage girl yearning to be close to him, closer.

From the piano, he retrieves a bouquet of tulips wrapped in cellophane, telling the audience that at each concert he gives flowers to one young girl. Peering into the darkened auditorium, he asks, half joking, whether any girls have actually come to the concert. “Have any of you mothers or grandmothers brought your granddaughter with you?”

I lean forward, looking around. In one section — members of a tour bus, no doubt — is a group of older women all wearing jaunty red hats. At least twenty of these hats turn in unison as if searching the audience. No one else moves. The row in front of me seems to be mother-and-daughter pairs, but most of the daughters wear bifocals, while some of the mothers, I noticed earlier, used canes to climb the stairs. After a moment of silence, Pat Boone, cajoling, lets us know he found one young girl at his earlier, four o’clock show. He lowers the microphone to his side, waiting.

Me. I want it to be me.

A girl, her neck bent, silky brown hair shading her face, finally walks forward from the rear of the auditorium. Pat Boone hurries down the few steps, greeting her before she reaches the stage. He holds out the flowers, but she doesn’t seem to realize she’s supposed to take them.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Amber.” She wears ripped jeans and a faded sweatshirt.

“Here.” Again he urges the tulips toward her hands. “These are for a lovely girl named Amber.”

As strains of “April Love” flow from the four-piece band, she finally takes the flowers. His arm encircles her waist. Facing her, he sings as if just to her, “April love is for the very young…” The spotlight darkens, an afterglow of sunset. The petals of the tulips, probably placed on stage hours earlier, droop.

After the song, Pat Boone beams at her and asks for a kiss. “On the cheek, of course.” He laughs, reassuring the audience, as he points to the spot. The girl doesn’t move. “Oh, please, just one little peck.” His laugh dwindles to a smile.

I lean back, sliding down in my seat. I lower the binoculars to my lap.

Kiss him, I want to whisper to the girl, not wanting to witness Pat Boone embarrassed or disappointed.

No, walk away from him. Because he’s old enough to be your father, your grandfather.

Instead, he leans forward and quickly brushes his lips on her cheek. With the bouquet held awkwardly in her arms, she escapes down the aisle to her seat.

Now his voice needs to rest, perhaps. The lights on stage are extinguished. Images of Pat Boone in the Holy Land flash on two large video screens built into the wall behind the pulpit. The introduction to the theme song from
Exodus
soars across the hushed audience. Atop the desert fortress Masada — the last outpost of Jewish zealots who chose mass suicide rather than Roman capture — a much younger Pat Boone, in tan chinos, arms outstretched, sings, “So take my hand and walk this land with me,” lyrics he, himself, wrote. The real Pat Boone sits on a stool watching the video pan to Israeli children wearing kibbutz hats, orchards of fig trees, camels, the Sea of Galilee, Bethlehem, the old city in Jerusalem. The Via Dolorosa. The Wailing Wall. The Dead Sea.

“Until I die, this land is mine.”

A final aerial shot circles a sweatless and crisp Pat Boone on Masada. Desert sand swelters in the distance.

This land is mine…

For the first time I wonder what he means by these words he wrote. Does he mean, literally, he thinks the Holy Land is his, that it belongs to Christianity? Or, perhaps, is he momentarily impersonating an Israeli, a Zionist, a Jew? Or maybe this appropriation is just a state of mind.

Pat Boone, Pat Boone. Who are you? I always thought I knew.

The lights flash on. Arising from his stool, Pat Boone is smiling. The band hits the chords as he proclaims we’ll all have “A Wonderful Time up There.”

Periodically, growing up, I frequented churches, immersing myself in hymns and votive candles. Once I even owned a cross necklace and a garnet rosary, superficially believing Catholic and Christian amulets offered luck and protection. So I’m more familiar with Christian songs than those of my own religion even though at one time in my life, in elementary school, I attended Jewish services.

Saturday mornings, when we lived on the island of St. Thomas, my parents and I drove up Synagogue Hill, parking by the wrought-iron gate leading to the temple. We entered the arched stucco doorway where my father paused to don a yarmulke. Here the air was cool, shaded from tropical sun. In my best madras dress, I trailed behind my parents down the aisle, the floor thick with sand. My feet in my buffalo-hide sandals etched small imprints beside the tracks left by my father’s heavy black shoes. I sat between my parents on one of the benches. The rabbi, standing before the mahogany ark containing the six Torahs, began to pray. I slid from the bench to sit on the sandy floor.

The sand was symbolic in this nineteenth-century synagogue, founded by Sephardic Jews from Spain. During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews, forced to worship in secret, met in cellars where they poured sand on floors to muffle footsteps, mute the sound of prayers. Otherwise, if caught, they would be killed. This was almost all I knew of Judaism except stories my mother told me about the Holocaust when bad things happened to Jews — little Jewish girls, too.

Throughout the service, I sprinkled sand over me as if at the beach. I trailed it down my bare legs. I slid off my sandals, submerging my toes beneath grains of coral. Lines of sand streaked the sweaty crooks of my elbows. Small mounds cupped my knees. I even trickled it on my head until it caught in the weave of my braids. I leaned against one of the cool, lime-washed pillars, smudging my dress as well. No one in the congregation, not even my parents, ever seemed to notice. Perhaps they were too engrossed by readings from the Torah to see me…while, to me, none of their prayerful chants were as lovely as sand. Instead, I watched wands of light beam through arched windows glinting off mica in the sand, off me. I felt as if I, myself, could become one with whitewash, with sand, with light. Then, later that night, home in bed, maybe my father wouldn’t find me, wouldn’t be able to see or distinguish me. Maybe if I poured enough sand over my body I could discover how to hide all little Jewish girls, make us invisible. Instead, it seemed to be my own father’s footsteps that were muffled, for no one in the congregation ever heard or saw him. Not as he really was.

After the concert, I slowly walk through the church lobby, exhausted. At the sales booth, buying a CD, I ask whether Pat Boone will be signing autographs. No one seems to know. A gray-haired man limps past, the word security stenciled on his black T-shirt. The church ladies stream out the door, not seeming to expect anything more of the evening.

I could follow them.

But at the far corner of the lobby is a hallway that seems to lead to the back of the auditorium, behind the stage. It is empty. No one guards the entrance. I turn down its plush, blue-carpeted stillness. My footsteps are silent. It is a hush that might precede a worship service. Solemn, scentless air. Dim sconces line the walls. I had thought there would be a throng of grandmothers lining up for autographs and snapshots. But I am alone gripping his CD in one hand, my letter to him in the other.

At the end of the corridor are two wide doors, shut. I assume they’re locked, but as I grasp the knob it turns. Another hallway. I pass another T-shirted guard, this one holding a silent walkie-talkie, his ear plugged with a hearing aid. I assume he’ll stop me. But my straight solid footsteps, the determined look on my face seem to grant me entrance. I must look as if I belong here. I act as if I know what I’m doing.