Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family Read online

  “Ari,” Robert remembers, “was in this class that happened to have a lot of boys in it and they were a pretty noisy and hyperactive group, which was why I, the only male teacher in the grade, got them. One day when everyone was talking all at once and I was losing control of the class Ari suddenly decided to take care of me. He stood up and shouted, ‘Shut up and sit down!’ and then he pounded his fist on the desk and they all did. Classic Emanuel. You put your heart into everything, one hundred percent. Of course later I had to take Ari aside and explain that while I appreciated his help, keeping order in the classroom is something I’ll have to do by myself.”

  My youngest brother was incredibly sensitive to matters of fairness, especially when it came to kids who stood out as different in any way. Ari became a staunch defender of his friend Michael Alter’s younger brother Harvey, who had profound learning disabilities and endured a lot of teasing.

  Harvey was the kind of kid that bullies picked as a target. In one memorable instance a football player who had always rubbed Ari the wrong way decided to make fun of Harvey during lunch in the high school cafeteria. Ari, who was carrying a food tray and walking with Harvey, whacked the bully in the face with the tray and then threw himself at him, punching furiously.

  Generally speaking, these fights required my mother to come to the school to hear what had happened and while she might defend Ari in front of a school official, she would always lecture him later. Here was a woman devoted to the antiwar movement and peaceful resistance, yet she was regularly required to come to school to deal with a violent and self-justifying kid who was quick to start throwing punches.

  “There’s always a better way to settle things than fighting,” she would say. “What would the world be like if every time one country insulted another they had a war over it? What the world needs is more peacemakers, not people who lose their tempers.” In the case of the bully football player, Ari soon forgot the blow-by-blow details. He had so many fights as a kid that they all ran together. But he would always remember how Harvey, Michael, and his mother appreciated what he did.

  Harvey and Michael’s mother, Laura, became something like a favorite aunt to Ari in part because she saw so much of him at her house and at the school. Michael and Ari got into trouble together so often that Laura Alter arrived at more than a few meetings in the principal’s office only to find Marsha Emanuel already waiting.

  What struck Mrs. Alter about these incidents, and about Ari in general, was that he was almost always able to charm his way out of trouble and, even if he could not escape punishment, he always managed to quickly rebuild any relationships he may have damaged. “Even when he was little he had this glibness, a way of talking that helped him get away with things.”

  As she got to know our entire family, Laura Alter saw that Ari’s easy way with words, and his ability to disagree and even fight without breaking bonds, came directly from our family. The older we got, the more our dinner table conversation became like a round-robin debate with people taking various sides of an issue just for the sake of arguing. “You liked that movie? Well then, let me tell you why you’re wrong.”

  Laura also got to hear, especially from my mother, a brand of politics and feminist values that reinforced ideals that Laura had nurtured for many years but had rarely expressed. When she did, her conservative husband complained that she was talking “like Marsha Emanuel.”

  In the late 1960s the northern suburbs of Chicago were home to quite a few women who, like my mother, had a deep interest in social issues and were becoming more outspoken. Behind the picket fences and well-trimmed lawns, Wilmette was one of those places where many seemingly traditional men and women—especially women—were giving serious thought to what were then radical ideas about race, politics, gender, and the war in Vietnam. Consciousness-raising groups sprouted like dandelions and ideas voiced by radical thinkers began to get a hearing in sunken living rooms and breakfast nooks. Laura Alter was among those who were, for the lack of a better word, radicalized by what they read and what they heard in conversation with other women, like my mother.

  Unlike ours, the Alter family was more conventional. Bill Alter firmly claimed the role of patriarch and made it clear he thought his views were superior. A real estate developer who became quite wealthy, he was on the conservative side when it came to politics and the roles of men and women. During a business trip to New York with her husband, Mrs. Alter visited a favorite great-aunt who had been a card-carrying communist. On the spur of the moment she joined an antiwar march on Fifth Avenue. By coincidence, Bill happened to get out of a cab at a spot where the parade was passing and saw his wife, who was dressed in a bright orange designer outfit. Later Bill Alter scolded her for making a spectacle of herself, but she stood proud. The moment marked the beginning of a new phase of life that would lead her to more activism, college, and then graduate school.

  Laura Alter’s move away from the life of the traditional homemaker and toward a renewed engagement with the world was repeated a thousand times over in Wilmette. More than a few men were able to see their wives’ point of view, and liberalism, which included equal rights for women, opposition to the war, and a generalized distrust of authority, came into fashion. Wilmette was even a stop on Jane Fonda’s fund-raising tour on behalf of veterans’ groups opposed to the war.

  Liberals in our community found both spiritual and social support at a synagogue called Am Yisrael, which was a hotbed of activism. The congregation was led by Rabbi William Frankel, who had been born in Vienna in 1923 and had lived under Nazi rule as a child. In 1966 he was one of three rabbis who marched with Dr. King in Chicago and invited him to speak at three suburban temples. The congregation’s Friday night lectures became standing-room-only venues for politicians, writers, and others who talked about all the vital issues of the day.

  Even though we were just kids, we were encouraged to attend the lectures and were welcomed to ask questions, like anyone else. The first time I tried this was when the archconservative Philip Crane was running in a special election for the House seat vacated by Donald Rumsfeld, who had been appointed to serve in the Nixon administration. We were studying ancient Greece in school so I asked Crane, who was a super-hawk on Vietnam, why he chose to act like a Spartan instead of a more enlightened Athenian. Although I don’t recall it now, Crane, who held a doctorate in history, probably gave me a pretty good answer. I do know that he went on to win the election and many more after that.

  Although I was already a bit of a nerd when I arrived in Wilmette, the feedback from teachers, other students, and parents in Wilmette fueled my obsessions. In fact, the whole educational endeavor in our new hometown seemed designed to supercharge ambitious kids with a continuous loop of educational challenges, support, and rewards. In my case the best early example of this process was my project for a class about the Middle Ages. I chose to create a replica of Harlech Castle in Wales.

  My neighbor Mitch Cohen, who lived directly across the street, agreed to be my partner. I also got help from my mother’s cousin Jack Skayan, who had come to live with us while recovering from hepatitis he contracted while traveling. Jack had studied some architecture in college and had an artistic streak. We commandeered the linoleum floor of our family room. At first Ari and Rahm teased me for being a nerd obsessed with creating a glorified dollhouse. They hung back while Jack, Mitch, and I glued the cardboard base, laid out the floor plan, and sketched the location of the outer walls, the four main towers, and all the buildings. Using X-Acto knives, pliable rulers, and surgical tools lent by my father, Jack, Mitch, and I scored hundreds of individual “bricks” on balsa wood, rounded pieces for turrets, and glued walls together. As they watched the castle take shape Ari and Rahm became interested enough to volunteer their help. They painted the “water” a deep blue and used our mom’s hair dryer to heat up clay so it would be easily shaped to form the contours of the countryside.

  Like most monumental building projects, the construction of the cast
le was plagued by cost overruns, accidents, and labor disputes. Misapplied clay slid off the cardboard base. Misplaced footsteps—some purposely misplaced by angry brothers—caused further damage, while arguments over tools and methods led to wrestling matches and stockouts of balsa wood at Tom Thumb crafts store delayed completion. Fortunately I was big enough to prevent my brothers from destroying the castle, and my parents, acting like some municipal bonding authority, happily covered the expense of repairs, alterations, and additions to the project.

  When it was finished, the castle was eased into the back of the family station wagon and my mother drove it very slowly over to Romona School. Everyone was impressed as Mitch and I carried the castle into the school. The A-plus grade was satisfying but we felt especially proud when we were asked to put our project on display at a district learning center. For months we heard that people were inspecting the project with great care and admiration. The idea that you could get such recognition from the community for academic work was a major revelation for me. Equally inspiring, for all three of us, was the notion that anyone—including a kid—could conceive of something ambitious, marshal resources, and with a concentrated effort achieve some success.

  After the castle project, Jack got the idea to build a rudimentary computer based on a plan he saw in Scientific American. A bit of delicate soldering was required, but the real work involved going to Radio Shack and hardware stores for the switches and other components. My mother was happy to accommodate us, and in short order we had the contraption built and running. Basically a set of switches and a battery glued to a board and connected by wires, the device was more like a humongous if crude calculator than a computer, but it was more sophisticated than anything we had ever seen.

  As the family geek, I got the most out of projects like the calculator/computer, but when they found something they wanted to pursue Ari and Rahm got similar backing. In Rahm’s case, his major interest was a bit surprising. He was keenly sensitive to any slights based on his height, age, or masculinity, which is why we were all taken aback when he decided to take up, in earnest, the art of the dance.

  It started with my mother’s decision to make us all take ballet lessons. His 1960 bar mitzvah injury notwithstanding, our father was a terrific dancer, and our parents were always the dancing hit of any Jewish celebration. Our mother figured that it would be a good skill for us to possess, too. But for reasons that have been lost to time, she signed us up not for ballroom or modern dance, but for introductory ballet.

  Our dance school occupied a big space above the Rexall drugstore at the Edens Plaza shopping center, which was about a mile and a half from our home. It was run by an enterprising male dance teacher who had outfitted it with a smooth wooden floor, mirrors, and ballet barres. He seemed to promise the parents of Wilmette that he could turn their children into stars. More like tumbling, biting bear cubs than fleet-footed antelopes, Ari, Rahm, and I would have preferred to study karate or jujitsu but there was no way we could escape the dance studio. To our relief, the three of us had a private lesson each week, which spared us from the judgment of other kids.

  Ari would later confess that the dance lessons at Edens Plaza helped him in sports. I did not make enough progress to be considered coordinated or elegant, but I learned enough to enjoy myself at bar mitzvahs and parties through my high school years. But neither of us enjoyed going to those lessons. Quite the contrary. We hated the black tights and ballet shoes we were required to wear and dreaded being seen going in or out of the dance studio. Whenever we were spied by classmates or friends we had to endure their taunts. Once Ari chased a boy down the sidewalk and beat him until he cried for mercy after he asked if we had remembered to bring our tutus.

  After a year devoted to learning the first through fifth positions and other moves, Ari and I had had enough and were permitted to quit. Rahm, to everyone’s surprise, stuck with it.

  For the next six years, Rahm endured teasing from friends and classmates and risked being spotted in his tights, in order to learn and master ever-more-challenging elements of dance. He progressed rather quickly, showing that he had the strength and natural athletic ability to perform impressive leaps and lifts and the discipline to accept criticism and endure the physical pain that comes with ballet. My mother loved that Rahm found something to pour himself into, something that helped him to distinguish himself. But she also reminded him that his ability “is a gift from God. It’s not for you to keep, but to share” through performance.

  As strong as he may have been, Rahm was still very small for his age. Ari and I made a point of watching out for trouble from anyone who even thought about making fun of him. This did not mean we foreswore teasing him ourselves, or even suggesting from time to time that he might be ready for a new tutu. What’s a brother for? But where outsiders were concerned, we were extremely protective and made it clear that anyone who bothered him would have to deal with us.

  When he outgrew the ballet school over the Rexall pharmacy, my parents transferred him to a studio in Evanston, where he could get more advanced coaching from a locally famous teacher named Gus Giordano. Working with Gus, Rahm developed strength, stamina, and a kind of grace that was evident even when he wasn’t performing. The way he walked, and even the way he occupied space in a room, changed in ways that made him seem more substantial and more confident despite his relatively short stature. This was, no doubt, the benefit my parents were imagining as they supported the lessons and attended his performances. Ballet was an art form but it was also a way to build discipline and character.

  By the time Rahm reached high school, he was good enough, and confident enough, to let anyone know that he was passionate about dance. With Ari helping to police the knuckleheads, he got much positive reinforcement for his efforts, and he did both choreography and performances in high school. Rahm’s crowd of friends included lots of kids who were interested in theater, music, and dance, but he also enjoyed a brief stint as a soccer player. I think he gravitated toward the game because it was the one sport we had played with our dad.

  Although Rahm wouldn’t have a long run in varsity sports, he got all the family support he needed to make steady progress with Gus Giordano and make a lasting impression on the stage at school. I received similar backing for every interest I ever expressed. One example of this involved a cow heart, with lungs attached, that my grandfather Herman acquired somewhere in his wanderings through butcher shops and delivered to me wrapped in white, waxy butcher paper. My parents allowed me to dissect these organs on a card table that I set up in the family room and covered with plastic. Most of the time I performed this cardiac surgery with my friend Jerry Glass. We would make slices here and there and compare what we saw to anatomical drawings of the human heart and the plastic models that my father brought home from his office. But even though he gave us tools and anatomical aids, my father did not coach us through this work or even discuss it with us. He left it to us to find out how the valves worked, discover the artery opening, and trace the vessels that move blood to the lungs and back to the left atrium.

  While I played surgeon and Rahm required frequent taxi service to rendezvous with beautiful ballerinas, Ari made very few requests for help with any of his interests. This was probably because he already spent more than enough time with my mother working on academic skills. Hyperactive to the point where he literally shook as he struggled to sit still, Ari nevertheless managed to wait as my mother spread flour on a silver tray she had received as a wedding gift and then took his hand in hers to trace the letters of the alphabet. An invention of her own design, the flour tray was intended to give my brother some physical sensation to match the appearance of the letters on paper.

  The pressure Ari felt as my mother coached him was matched by the embarrassment he experienced whenever he was in a situation that required him to read out loud. When everyone at synagogue picked up their prayer books to read some passage in English, Ari stared at the page and hoped no one would notice that
he couldn’t participate. Sometimes he would attempt to recite, listening carefully and then voicing the words a split second after he heard them. I recall being perplexed by his struggle. No one in our family could spell worth a damn. I was always the first one out in spelling bees at school. But Ari couldn’t read even a few sentences out loud. He had similar experiences in school. If a teacher ever told him he would have to read out loud the next day, he would spend hours practicing the night before, hoping to memorize the words so he wouldn’t have to actually follow the text.

  Dependent on others for extra help with academics, Ari made it a point to go it alone in many of his extracurricular pursuits, most of which involved moneymaking ventures. The first was probably the sale of our mother’s cheesecake, which she prepared on a weekly basis and included in our school lunches. The cake was almost achingly good, but Ari had the discipline to be satisfied with the piece he had with dinner so that he could sell his next day’s portion at school to the highest bidder. My mother did not have any idea this was going on until a neighbor telephoned to ask her to supply her with an entire cheesecake for a party. For a moment she thought this request was part of the suburban subculture—maybe she could ask Mrs. Grant for a pot roast—but then the caller asked her for a price.

  “How much do I charge?” she asked incredulously. “What gave you the idea that I sell cheesecakes?”

  Once the two women stopped laughing, my mother had to say she felt a bit encouraged by Ari’s initiative. She also insisted on making one of her cakes and delivering it to our neighbor as a gift. Soon after this little retail adventure, Ari showed more entrepreneurial potential as he drafted Rahm and me and some other boys as laborers to do yard work while he kept a cut of the proceeds for himself. These little businesses required a degree of planning and organization that stood in stark relief to Ari’s struggles at school and his many conflicts with our father.