loud whispers always
by Jerry Vilhotti
"Tom you fucking all
right?" Rhoda whispered loudly. All her
whispers were loud. She helped her husband on with
his black robe that resembled ones being worn
by so-called supreme court judges who had
elected their first president; ever forgetting to be
impartial while dashing a country's dream to really
make a better world for everyone.
He did have a little touch of the flu and seemed very
depressed which frightened her.
Tom looked out to Arthur Avenue as he fondled his little
pill box. For the past two years with the help of
"Mister Lithium Pill" he had managed to stay
focused on his studies which led to this great day with
his being awarded a Ph.D. in
family psychology. He continued to look out at
the old neighborhood where he had roamed with his
shoe-shine box; emphasizing his limp, due to infantile
paralysis, to garner pity that in turn would make more
pennies flow into his cupped hand. If his older
brother Leny One N and their older brother-cousin
Flab weren't with him for if they were they would have
dished him out by outpacing him to shoes while adding a
little more insult by calling him a slow crippled
bastard! To Rhoda his
expression was the same one that had eaten his face
the first time he went looking for Christ in
Northshredder New York and was confined in their mental
institution for ten days; signing him out after he
promised he would rest more as that was his problem;
staying awake three days at a time. She did not
notice his constant use of saying thoughts in threes.
Finally, Tom gave up trying to recreate a memory of his
mother walking along Arthur Avenue; stopping at a
vendor's cart to buy broccoli rape that was very cheap in
price and if not sold that day thrown away so bitter in
taste it was. She was gone since February.
They had buried her on his birthday. When the dirt
was heaped upon her casket, Tom felt as if he were
being covered too for his father had told him she had
wanted to abort him thinking a fourth mouth to feed would
be too much during the dying of hunger Great Depression
days .... Tom's
father-in-law, a doctor in law who managed to escape
Austria with his wife and two year old daughter Rhoda,
began the first toast; prefacing his remarks by
mentioning how he became a Zionist and had helped in the
creation of the new Jewish state and hoped deeply the
Jews would live in peace with their Arab
brother-cousins and then he added:"Tom you grew up
only a block away from this Jesuit University where Vince
Lombardi and the other six blocks of granite prevented
other schools to score points on them and where John
Garfield the young tough Jewish kid was sent to live
in your neighborhood by loving relatives to keep him out
of the electric chair standing in their Lower East Side
but it took you a journey of fifty thousand miles to
reach your graduation from it! I salute you my
fellow Doctor!" All this was not
said as smoothly as implied for Tom's mother-in-law kept
constantly interrupting her husband with correct
pronunciations while telling everyone sitting at the
round table in the City Island restaurant that that was
the reason her husband could not practice law
in America as he had before the nazis came to
power that did to the Jews what now was
being done to the Palestinians by their very
own people who had forgotten all the suffering they
had endured and then ended her statement by
telling a little joke: "Jews and your
brother-cousins wake up and smell the graves for
life is too short to die for hate!"
This made everyone laugh uneasily.
During all the little toasts racing through Tom's
mind were the miles he had taken: getting thrown out of
Washington State that had given him a six year
scholarship for his masters and doctorate degrees
but threw him out after fifteen months when they
discovered he had had women living with him and
being a fine moralistic people - looking forward to a
police state that would make them feel secure in a sinful
fornicating country where they could force their will on
others satisfying their control needs - they could
not nor would not tolerate Satan's games
to happen on their sacred campus overlooked by the
ghostly Mount Tacoma that sometimes appeared
like a god threatening them; his third wife a
"Boston blue blood", who because she was of
American-Irish descent was hated in that city
where signs told Irish immigrants they needn't bother to
apply for work in their places of business nor be
servants in the grand homes, told Tom she also was a
descendant of the Italian explorer Cabot and the very
large inheritance she was to get after her father died
made Tom propose to her, while doing psychotherapy on
her, just about the time when transference was
happening .... So bitter did she become when Tom
left her for Rhoda, she called The
Jewish University and told them Tom was
"dead-beating" on his support payments for her
and her two small girls and this did get
him thrown out of their doctorate program and lastly
his three confinements in institutions in New
York City, New York State and Connecticut -
and only after Connecticut psychiatrists
gleefully asked Rhoda for permission to fry Tom's
brains did he escape like a dog in the night to give
up his search to find Christ and Saints that loved
animals almost as much as people and instead began
to swallow the pills that were not quite the size of
the Holy Host; much smaller than a dog's
paw. END Jerry Vilhotti© 1-9-03
They thunder sweetness and light from their clouds and
offer human sacrifice to the God of Love.
Illustrations:
George Grosz
Pen and ink drawings
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