Becoming an American: And Other Stories

By Burt Rashbaum

In 2017 an aging Baby Boomer must be put in a nursing home. His son discovers a box of photographs spanning his fathers life. The photos inspire stories to portray what it was like being an immigrant, a first generation American in the 1930s, and a young man facing life, love and loss across the 20th century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 24, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462836291

Burt Rashbaum

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Burt Rashbaum was born in 1953. Educated at the State University of New York at Buffalo (B.A., 1975), and at the University of Colorado, (M.A., 1993), he has been writing for over twenty years. He has published poems, short stories, and non-fiction in newspapers, small magazines and journals in Chicago; Palm Beach; Detroit; Miami, Denver, Oklahoma City; Boulder; Raleigh; Santa Fe; Sudbury, Massachusetts; Prattville, New York; Roseville, California; and Nederland, Colorado. In 1985 he was awarded the Human Interest Award by the National Lesbian and Gay Press Association for his article (co-authored with Peter Ralin) on AIDS, "The Fragile Cord," and his poem, "My Beautiful Kite." His work was most recently anthologized in XY Files: Poems on the Male Experience, published by Sherman-Asher Publishing Company of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mr. Rashbaum currently lives in Nederland, Colorado, with his wife Sharon, and son Max.

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Copyright © 2000 by Burt Rashbaum.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

SALT

LAST NIGHT AT THE NEWSSTAND

WORN SILK AND CRACKED LEATHER

THE JOURNEY FROM THERE TO HERE

CANDLE FLAME

BECOMING AN AMERICAN

A SHOVELFUL OF EARTH

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

IN LOVING MEMORY

TO MY GRANDMOTHERS,

JENNIE FIRESTONE RASHBAUM AND

DORA GOLDSTEIN ROSEN.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

He thought he’d been sleeping. What woke him? Then he heard, from the next room. His father walking around, talking to himself. This was what he’d heard about from his aunt, from his father’s friends. His father talked to the mirror, no longer recognizing his own reflection.

Get yourself on the next plane and come down here and take care of your father, his aunt had said, because I can’t do it.

His father had acquired the habit of keeping the lights on in his apartment, because he feared to be alone. He was up most nights. Since Robert was staying there, though, he’d decided to sleep in the dark like a normal person. Now his father sounded angry. He was complaining about the dark: to his friend the reflection.

Why is it so dark? I don’t know. You didn’t turn them off. We need the light. This is nuts, it’s crazy. What are we doing here anyway? That’s what we’ll do: turn on all the lights in this crazy apartment. What are we doing here anyway? If it doesn’t work, we can always move back to Brooklyn.

What his aunt couldn’t tell him he learned from the neighbors. One night his father had wandered onto his balcony and was unable to figure out how to get back into his apartment. It was three a.m. His father started screaming for help and woke his whole building. The neighbors came out to find James Steffens standing on his balcony, alone, afraid, and stark naked.

Robert had called his sister Alice in New York, and she told him she’d meet him as soon as she could get a flight.

This is it, he thought, the old man is finally gonesville. Another Baby Boomer down the drain. He listened to his father while he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

We’ll go back to New York where we belong. You’re my only friend. I haven’t said that to anyone in so long. We’ll be okay. And if it doesn’t work: we’ll kill ourselves. That’s what we’ll do. But it’s okay. You’re so handsome. All the ladies always thought so. Back when you had a ponytail. Remember? They did. You were some hippie. Ha! Even when your hair got thin. Why are you laughing! I’m laughing too. Look at us. Okay. We need some light. This damn place is so dark! We need the lights! Who do they think we are? We’ll turn every light on in this place!

His father stormed out of his bedroom, and flicked on the hallway light, the bathroom light, then the second bedroom. He was heading for the living room, Robert could hear him muttering in anger. He came out and headed for the kitchen.

Dad!

The old man spun around, not seeing him at first, but then focusing in on Robert. It was obvious that he had totally forgotten the young man’s presence.

What? Who?

You woke me up, Dad. I was sleeping here. I can’t sleep with all these lights on.

The old man came over to the couch, knelt by his son.

Bobby?

Yes, Dad. Bobby. I’ve been here all day, remember?

Yes, that’s right. I was—

Who were you talking to, Dad? You woke me up.

The old man smiled at his son, winked at him.

I’ll go to sleep now. You sleep now too. Bobby. You’re Bobby.

Right, I am. And Alice is coming down from New York tomorrow, and we’re going to find you a nice place to live, with other people. Remember?

Alice? She’s the little one.

"ALICE. MY SISTER? FORTY-TWO YEARS OLD? MARRIED TO HUTCH? I’m the little one, Dad. I’m thirty-two. We’re ten years apart. Always have been."

She’s coming? We’ll all be together!

Yes, Dad. We came to help you change your life. This is-

The old man started crying, bawling like a baby. He grabbed hold of his son and cried and cried. Robert held him tightly.

I’m so scared, he wailed, I don’t know what. I’m so scared.

It’s okay, Dad. Don’t worry. Everything is going to work out. You can’t live here alone anymore. Remember? We talked about this?

The old man looked at Robert. Searching the young man’s eyes.

But how are we going to pay for this?

Your Social Security, plus your investments. Don’t worry, Dad. It’s all taken care of.

Who’s Hutch?

Alice’s husband. You know, Hutch. Crazy Hutch. He always liked you.

Oh yeah, the other one. I knew him. You sleep now, Bobby.

You too, Dad. I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Try and get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.

The old man returned to his room. Robert could still hear him arguing with himself. Robert began turning off the lights. He’d always hoped his father would be the first to go. He knew the old man wouldn’t make it on his own. When his mother died five years ago, he and his sister knew it was only a matter of time before the old man began to fail. His mother had held the family together, she’d worked to keep the house clean, to present a picture of warmth to the world that Robert knew was half dream and half facade. She was always the true flower child, and although Robert was too often embarrassed by her wild behavior, he knew that as long as she was alive there was the hope that some of her beautiful life force would help counteract the Steffens Stiffness, as he’d always referred to it. A chronic condition only cured by death, or now in his father’s case, mind death.

There were so many old people everywhere, Robert thought. The Boomers. Old and in the way. Everybody knew it was coming. All his friends had to deal with their aging hippie parents.

Finally too old to rock’n’roll. They were going to change the world, right? He’d learned about them in school. Now they were everywhere, crowding Robert’s generation. What kind of world had they made? It seemed like the same old world to Robert. His father had pretended once upon a time that he and his peers were different. They had their long hair, they hugged instead of shook hands, they smoked their drugs instead of drinking them. But as Robert grew older, he began to see his father’s true cowardice, his retreat into the ways of his father and those who came before, and the Steffens Stiffness reasserted itself. When Robert was old enough to benefit from the ideals of his father’s generation, the old man had nothing to give. Robert had always resented him; first for the hypocrisy, then for the inability to reach beyond the family curse and give his son anything. Sure, the old man probably loved him (his mother had told him that on too many occasions), but Robert needed stronger evidence than second-hand innuendoes. Why hadn’t the old man broken the mold? Were all the Boomers frauds? Was it some kind of revenge against their parents, to become like them? Whatever it was, it sure wasn’t love. Robert was sure of that. And now maybe he was having a final revenge, to come back east and put his father away, where he would wither away and finally die.

Robert had fought the curse, and gone as far away from his eastern Brooklyn origins as he could. And in Colorado he’d found Rita, his beautiful Hispanic lover, who had crossed her own prejudices and embraced him and filled him with what he knew he’d never find in his old familiar haunts. He wished she was here now, to hold him in her soft bronze arms, to whisper to him in her own tongue and sing the Spanish lullabies her own mother had sung to her, which she’d sung to him in the darkness of their bedroom.

As long as he was awake, he figured he might as well try and make some order from the mess that was everywhere. He went to turn off the bathroom light. He couldn’t believe the filth his father had gotten used to since the death of his mother. The place was a pigsty. The floor was almost black from his father’s unwashed feet.

The man hardly bathed these days. Robert knew that was one of the signs of Alzheimer’s. There was hair everywhere, whiskers too. The bathtub was coated with mold. The whole place stank. He had some job ahead of him, and he knew that Alice would hardly help. She was coming down from New York for moral support, mostly. She had inherited the Steffens Stiffness more than he had. But that was okay. That was fine.

He went back to the living room, to the breakfront, a huge piece of outdated furniture, so dark, so overbearing, completely out of place in the hot climate of south Florida. Robert opened one of the cabinet doors, and a large cardboard box fell onto the floor.

Photographs. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of photographs.

He didn’t hear his father now. The old man must have fallen asleep at last. He took the box over to the couch and turned the lamp on. What a find. So many years. There was his father, holding his sister on his shoulder. Alice was maybe seven. They were in a swimming pool. He could tell it was the country, where they’d spent so many summers. The same place that his father had gone when he was a kid. Robert had never liked the place. He always longed for the city, where he could feel more alive. It always struck him as strange that his parents and grandparents loved the country so much, and yet did nothing up there but complain. He always felt a need for a certain wildness that he could almost touch in the streets of the city; and yet, he thought looking at the photo, wasn’t it ironic that he’d found that same kind of wildness in the mountains of Colorado and the love he got from his Rita?

He took another. It was yellowed, but he could make out his father standing with his Aunt Adra. His father was maybe three, Adra about six. They were standing