By the Grace of the Game Read online

  Dad had been working with me on my shot since I could walk. The form was pure, with the fingers evenly spaced and the guide hand expertly placed. The release was smooth and natural. My shot found the net over and over again. My performance helped my dad prove his point to the crowd: with the proper technique, anyone could shoot a basketball.

  Even this little dipshit.

  Man, I loved this game.

  After broadcasting, my dad became an executive with the Knicks, and he’d take me to practice with him on the weekends, like he did when he was playing. We’d eat at the same diner afterward, always ordering cobb salads, no avocado, extra turkey. When it came to basketball, he schlepped me around everywhere. The game became our connective tissue, a love that tied us together. At home, he’d rebound for me in our driveway. I’d either listen when he gave me pointers, or I’d punt the ball into the woods and run inside. It could go either way, though I’d usually opt for the drama. There were stretches when I did more punting and running than a Green Bay Packer. I’d always come back out once I’d calmed down, and he’d be waiting for me.

  My dad never forced basketball on me and bragged to his friends about my grades, not my scoring average. He gave me the space and freedom to be whoever I wanted to be. I was the one who decided that I wanted to be like him. It was other people’s eyeballs that intensified that pursuit.

  In my room at night, I opened boxes of basketball cards, memorizing every stat off the back. I hid a flashlight under my pillow and read NBA history books beneath a blanket. I learned the life stories of the two players I most idolized: Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. Jordan had been cut from his high school varsity team as a sophomore, and Bird worked as a garbage collector in his hometown of French Lick, Indiana before enrolling at Indiana State for college. These guys became two of the greatest basketball players of all time. They were my proof that anyone could do anything. They were additional proof, at least, since I lived with the most extreme example and talked basketball with him constantly. When Dad got home from work at night, I’d always have the same request: “Ask me a trivia question!”

  He’d take a deep breath, dropping his keys on the counter and loosening his tie. I was so annoying, but this was what he’d signed up for. He’d had me, he’d infected me with this fever, and now he’d have to deal with it, all day, every day. “Okay, but just one,” he’d say, starting his way up the stairs. “Where did Oscar Robertson go to college?”

  “Cincinnati,” I’d quickly reply, following behind him. “Ask me another one.”

  “Fine,” he’d say as I trailed him into the bedroom. “Who is the only player to lead the NBA in points and assists in the same year?”

  “Nate Archibald,” I’d say. “Another.”

  His brow would wrinkle. “I’ve already asked you every question I can think of,” he’d say. “It’s time to eat.”

  I had no choice but to comply. After dinner, he’d relocate to our den to put on a game. I’d position myself next to him to watch. Dad loved basketball as if it had pulled him out of a fire. It took most of my life to realize it had. When my older sister would come down the stairs in the morning, she’d see me sitting at the head of the kitchen table, feet up, reading the sports section of the New York Daily News. I’d cut the NBA box scores out of the paper and keep them in an old cigar box in my room.

  My big sister wasn’t as rabid about the game as I was, but we grew up in the same house, so it was just a way of life. In fourth grade, when her class assignment was to read an autobiography of an important historical figure and give a presentation for the class, she listened to her classmates share stories of Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, and Ben Franklin. When it was her turn to present, my sister ran to the front of the room with a small basketball in her hand. She was wearing high-top sneakers, a Los Angeles Lakers jersey, and old athletic goggles. She released a picture-perfect skyhook and began rattling off facts about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar before the ball had even landed.

  My childhood was full of love and laughter and basketball, though I struggled with my sensitivity. Over time, I developed a nervous tic in my eyes. I’d shift my eyes from side to side to release the tension, an unnatural motion for anyone, especially a little kid. My mom took me to get a brain scan, and all was fine. The tic was from stress. I was eight years old. A big part of my stress came from having a famous father who was great at what I needed to be great at. Being the child of a celebrity is fun, but there’s a cost to it. Everyone you meet has expectations and motives. Everyone makes assumptions and judgements. These external pressures were only compounded by my naturally intense disposition.

  As a baby, I’d scream until I’d vomit when I wanted to come out of my crib. As a toddler visiting the doctor’s office to get a shot, I’d thrash so wildly and protest with such uncontrollable delirium that the doctors would have to put me in a straitjacket, a garment used to restrain mental patients and violent criminals. Based on my behavior at the doctor, that seemed like the very path I was headed down at that moment in my life.

  One of my greatest sources of joy as a kid was my grandmother, Anyu. She lived in the Bay Area, all the way across the country, but she visited us often. My friends would hear Anyu’s accent and ask where she was from. I was trained to say Romania, but that was the extent of it. I knew what the Holocaust was, but I hadn’t yet been exposed to the details.

  When she was in town, our lives revolved around food. The quantities and flavors defied comprehension. The ritual of gathering to eat as a family provided layers of nourishment. My dad sat at the head of our rectangular wooden table, serving as the epicenter for the swift rotations of faschilt, piros krumpli, uborka, and the rest. He and Anyu would exchange plates and communicate with each other in a language I didn’t understand. I simply ate, and ate, and ate, unbothered by where that might lead me. One night I’d be lying on the couch after Anyu’s dinner, the next I’d be lying on the bathroom floor. They were both fine by me.

  Each day, Anyu would spend her evenings cooking in our kitchen, oil crackling in hot pans, her hands casting spells, an aroma of warmth floating through the house. When my dad got home from work, the hot Hungarian food would be waiting. Anyu would make sure to cook extra rántott hús for me so I could bring it to school for lunch and share it with absolutely no one.

  Her white hair would be shining at the end of the driveway as the bus approached to drop me off after school. The New Jersey breeze was no match for her liberal application of Aqua Net hairspray. Her coif always stayed in place. One fall afternoon, as Anyu was rebounding for me in our driveway, the temperature dipped sharply. She begged me to go inside and put on a sweatshirt. For a Jewish grandmother, inadequately warm clothing is an open invitation to pneumonia, influenza, the plague, and quite possibly all three. Anyu would stop at nothing to get me to put on another layer. After protesting, I told her that if she could make a free throw, I’d run inside and get a sweatshirt. “Okay, give me two tries,” Anyu said. “Throw me the ball.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. She’d watched a lot of hoops in her day but had never shot a basket. She didn’t even know how to hold the ball. She fingered the laces in an awkward motion before bringing the ball down below her waist to heave it underhand — or appropriately, granny style. The first shot barely hit the rim. She laughed and asked for the ball back.

  She focused her eyes a little harder and bent a little lower. The second shot swished through the net. She threw her hands in the air and started clapping. She didn’t care about the shot. It was the sweatshirt that had her heart soaring. As far as she was concerned, my life had just been saved. Deep down, I was happy her shot went in. It was fucking freezing out there.

  The first time Anyu saw me play in an organized basketball game, I was in third grade, playing in a local rec league for fifth and sixth graders. My shorts looked like underwear and my jersey drooped over my bony frame. Sometimes, if the refs wo
uldn’t call fouls when I drove to the hoop, I’d start crying. I might have scored 10 points on my best night before that game. When Anyu came to see me play, I had 24 points. I don’t know how I scored so much, and I don’t know why. I just know that I liked having Anyu there watching me.

  2. Auschwitz & a spoon

  When Anyu returned to her family home in ­rural Transylvania in January 1945, her voice ricocheted off the walls. Everything in the house was gone, ransacked by looters. The laughter and conversation, the familiar hum of activity, it had all evaporated. A family of 12 had lived together in the house. Now, for the first time, Anyu was alone, without her parents and nine siblings.

  She already knew that a brother had died in a camp in Ukraine, a sister had disappeared in Budapest, and two other siblings had survived. She still had no idea what had happened to the rest of her family. She would learn about it when her sister returned from Auschwitz, the only one to come back from the death camp. She’d receive the news that both of her parents and three of her siblings had been killed there.

  The trains took them at the end of May 1944. They have no graves to visit and no death certificates to review. They were sent to Auschwitz and never heard from again. Anyu was 18 at the time. She was visiting her sister in Budapest when the Nazis invaded. Since Jews in Budapest were not sent en masse to the camps, she at least had the chance to fight for her life.

  Before the Holocaust’s new binary — die or survive — Anyu’s childhood was symbolized by a fistful of sour cherries and over­flowing pockets of porcini mushrooms. In the small village of Micula, Anyu’s hometown in Romania on the border with Hungary, green fields were speckled with silver poplars in all directions. There was natural beauty but no running water, electricity, or cars. To be able to pickle a vegetable was to possess the greatest piece of technology the town had to offer. There were no newspapers or televisions and certainly no streaming videos or autonomous vehicles. Anyu insists life was happier that way.

  Toilets were holes in the ground with makeshift wooden seats. The roads were paths carved through the mud by horse-drawn carts. The town’s retail offerings reflected the core needs of humanity: three food markets and three bars. That was it. There was probably a brothel nearby, too. Just a hunch.

  Anyu shared a room in the family home with her four sisters. Her five brothers had a room of their own. They were Orthodox, so the boys went to temple every Friday and Saturday. One of Anyu’s brothers would sneak a novel into temple and slip it into his prayer book, preferring to read his stories rather than read the scripture. The girls prepared the food while the boys were at synagogue. Anyu and her sisters only attended services on Yom Kippur. The men sat downstairs at temple and the women sat upstairs. Anyu’s father, Solomon, was an observant Orthodox Jew, but of the modern variety. He never grew the beard so common among Orthodox men, and he spent his free time in progressive pursuits such as playing chess and the violin. He was a successful landowner, employing a team of men who worked his property, growing plants and animals to be consumed by the family and sold to the community. On the land the men raised cows, turkeys, horses, chickens, sheep, ducks, and geese.

  Each animal provided precise utility for the family. The cow gave milk. The turkey became a steady supply of meat. The horse lent its muscle for pulling wagons in the fields. The chicken was good for both meat and eggs, with its significance magnified by the contribution its carcass made to the soup, the húsleves, the staple of Shabbat dinner, a Friday night tradition for Jews around the world. Shabbat dinner took three days to prepare in Micula. Anyu’s job was to pluck the feathers from the chicken one by one — a kosher preparation — after the kosher butcher had slaughtered the animal.

  The sheep provided wool, an important income source, as well as milk, which my great-grandmother made into cheese. The duck offered a variety of gifts, including its meat for eating, its firm feathers for couch pillows, and its fat, known as schmaltz, for cooking. The goose was the headliner, its usefulness unquestioned and its prizes robust: there was meat, there was a heaping supply of schmaltz, there were plush feathers used to make bedroom pillows, and lastly, there was the liver — the fabled goose liver — one of the great culinary delicacies in Europe. Anyu’s mother, Cecilia, would force-feed the goose to ensure the foie gras would be big and supple. The goose liver was so precious that it was never used to make the ordinary chopped liver served on Shabbat; duck, calf, or chicken livers were used instead. The goose liver was cooked separately with onions and served on toasted bread, melting away as it hit the heat of a hungry mouth.

  Off the side of the house, in a large green orchard dotted with cherry trees, there grew carrot, parsley, tomato, pepper, eggplant, potato, zucchini, apple, plum, pear, lettuce, onion, scallion, cabbage, white mushroom, raspberry, gooseberry, and cherry. Every meal featured fruits and vegetables plucked fresh from the vine.

  Leading up to the winter months, Anyu’s mother would harvest enough schmaltz from both the ducks and the geese to last the entire season. She’d store the excess cooking fat in large containers. They’d rest in a cupboard next to premade jars of tomato sauce, an assortment of jams, and pounds of pickled cucumbers, pickled sauerkraut, pickled red cabbage, and other pickled vegetables. Fresh carrots and parsley were kept in buckets of sand, preserving the vegetables through the cold months.

  In the spring, once the frost had gone and the cherry trees had bloomed, Anyu’s parents would walk hand in hand after lunch, meandering their way through the endless maze of puffy white cherry blossoms. Anyu would lay out a blanket beneath the bright clouds of flowery folds, her nose buried in one of her father’s books.

  During the summer, meals were eaten as a family on the front patio under the silver Transylvania sky. My great-grandmother dressed the table with a white tablecloth, the kosher dishes arranged precisely, the polished silverware placed just right. The food was consumed family style. Rántott hús, faschilt, cholent, piros krumpli, káposzta cosca, almas pite, meggyleves, húsleves. It was traditional Hungarian food — breaded chicken breasts, beef and onion patties, meat stew, red potatoes, sautéed cabbage, apple squares, sour cherry soup, chicken soup — made from scratch. These are the dishes Anyu has always prepared for me. Every time I’ve told her she’s the best cook that ever lived, which I’ve told her often, her response has been the same: “That’s because you never ate my mother’s cooking.”

  My great-grandfather sat at the head of the table and blessed the challah, baked fresh every Friday. Anyu was especially proud that her mother could braid the challah six times, not three like everyone else. When imported oranges were procured as a treat, my great-grandmother would fold the peel into the shape of a flower. When the tablecloth came off after dinner, a family dog, Tisa — big with white curly hair — would jump onto the table and sit for hours, watching over the house.

  For adventure, Anyu would hike to a nearby field with some combination of her nine siblings — Shari, Margo, Ernie, Bubby, Bala, Andor, Eugene, Miki, and Heidi — to pick porcini mushrooms. For the rest of her life, she would order any dish at a restaurant if it contained porcini mushrooms. “Now, they’re $22 a pound,” I once heard her proclaim with a finger in the air as the server set down her meal, “but they used to be free!”

  If Anyu couldn’t be found at home, her family knew where to look. They’d walk out into the orchard and peer into the cherry trees, their leaves swaying under starry night skies. Anyu would be sitting on a branch, snapping cherries off the tree and popping them straight into her mouth. There was no war, no worries, and no notion of the darkness to come. Life was nothing more than a loving family, a tall tree, and an endless supply of sweet, juicy cherries.

  Years later, it was my great-uncle Ernie, Anyu’s oldest brother, who was the first to die in the Holocaust. He was poisoned to death in a labor camp in Ukraine. The guards had thrown meat to the prisoners, with starving men ripping at each other’s clothes to secure a piece. The me
at had been injected with poison. It was 1942. He was 25 years old.

  My great-grandfather received the news on Shabbat, a Saturday. As an Orthodox Jew, he was strictly forbidden to read mail on Saturday. My great-grandfather had always abided by religious law, until then. He tore open the letter from the Red Cross and collapsed in tears when he learned that his son was dead. The stated cause of death was “exhaustion.” A boy who’d survived the camp supplied the truth years later, after Anyu’s dad was already gone.

  My great-uncle Bala, Anyu’s brother who read stories in temple, was summoned to a labor camp in Hungary, somewhere near Cluj. He was a prisoner with my future grandfather, a star athlete from Satu Mare, a neighboring city in Transylvania. Bala was never taken out of the country during World War II, or as Anyu would forever call it, “the War.” He was liberated by the Russians in August of 1944 and would live and die in Israel.

  My great-uncle Andor, or Andy as I knew him, was also taken to a labor camp in Hungary, likely near Budapest. He was transferred to the Budapest Ghetto near the end of the War. It was there that he was reunited with Anyu. It was there that his job was to collect dead Jews off the street, carry them into an abandoned building, and stack the bodies on top of each other in a crisscrossed pattern to ensure there was space for the others. After the War, he never talked about what he’d seen. Andy immigrated to New York City and worked in a leather factory. He died when I was a kid.