THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY 2003

 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