I finished the orals and went outside. All I remember, for some reason, was my right hand touching my left hand, as if to make sure my limbs were still there. I do not think I had ever experienced such an intellectual assault—and I had experienced many.
Afterward, I felt like a wake would be appropriate, but Sue and I had anticipated an easier time, and we had already agreed to meet good friends for lunch at a restaurant on Brattle Street called the Window Shoppe. The name was appropriate; it had always been a place to look in but never to enter. For us, it represented Yankee gentility. It was not so much that we could not afford to dine there (although we couldn’t); it was more that we did not belong there, maybe today most of all. But our friends had insisted on treating us, and so off we went.
Bernard Shapiro, a Canadian who was working on his PhD in education, was one of my readers, and he and his wife, Phyllis, had become fast friends of ours. We would have them over for Passover seders, and they had us over many times as well. Phyllis, an exuberant woman, was always outgoing, always “on.” Bernard cared deeply about providing education; he had graduated from McGill and would eventually become its president, or “principal” as that position is officially known. The Shapiros were a few years older than Sue and I, and it was nice to have been taken under their wing.
They greeted us at an outside table. I was still shaken. I felt no anticipated wave of euphoria, just headachy and tired, and I think Sue knew it. She told me to behave, that these were our friends and it was a special occasion. I do not recall what we talked about. They wanted to know how my trial went. I don’t remember much about the food, just that I was sitting next to a white trellis, freshly painted, clean. The lunch concluded, and we all hugged. They congratulated me, and Sue and I went home.
I think we straightened up the apartment a bit, although I’m not sure why. Finally, I told her that I was exhausted and was going to sleep. I recall that being the deepest and most rewarding sleep I had ever had. It was like being dead, and being dead was terrific. I was several fathoms down. There was no sense of time or place, no dreams, just the vague comfort of knowing that I was finished, that I was warm, that I was somehow released, at least for the time being, from burden. Time passed. Sue slept next to me. She was warm, and that, as always, felt very good.
At around nine o’clock in the evening the phone in the other room started to ring. It must have been ringing a long time before I heard it. I do not know where Sue was; perhaps she was as deeply asleep as I. I remember being annoyed that she had not gotten up to answer the phone. I got up and ran for it, slamming my head into a projecting corner. Blood came out in spurts, splattering the walls, drenching me. At that, Sue woke up. She must have put a towel or cloth to my head, which did little to stop the bleeding. We knew the drill; we went to the Harvard health center. While we waited, even amid all the blood (it was hard to imagine that the human body could produce so much), I remember thinking that it was actually a pretty nice facility. The walls had a newly painted smell. I was eventually patched up, and we left at around four in the morning.
I didn’t know it at the time because I hadn’t been able to answer the phone, but I had my PhD. Stitches and all, I was now Dr. Sanford D. Greenberg, the crowning achievement of an educational odyssey that seemed (in my fevered memory) to have endured as many challenges as that famous odyssey chronicled by Homer 2,500 years ago.
Far more important to me, I had also found the opportunity along the way to begin reimbursing Arthur for his endless kindness.
Sue and I were still in Oxford when I got a call from Arthur, who was now in architecture school. “Sandy, I’m really unhappy. I don’t like being in architecture school. I don’t like doing this.”
“So what is it you want to do?” I asked.
“I really love to sing,” he said. “You remember my high-school friend Paul, the guy who plays the guitar? We want to try our hand in the music business, but in order to do that, I have to have $400.” This was in 1964—$400 was a lot of money then. In fact, Sue and my entire savings amounted to just over that amount, but I sent the money off to Arthur immediately. What else could I possibly have done?
PART 3
Tikkun
Olam
14
The Start of Something Big
After gaining my doctorate, I set my sights on a law degree. I applied to Harvard and was accepted. This was the path I had wanted to follow all along. It was woven throughout my mentality and had been since I had become aware, from the experience of my family,
