Down to a Sunless Sea
Mathias B. Freese
Paperback, 5x8 in, 148 pages
Wheatmark, November 2007
ISBN: 9781587367335
Endorsements
“Mathias Freese is an inspired, talented writer, a
sharp-eyed, honest observer, and a caring, compassionate human
being. These qualities inform his dark, offbeat stories about life,
making these tales a poignant, precious pleasure to
read.”
—Rolf Gompertz
Author of TO LIFE! TO LOVE! In Poetry and Prose, A Spiritual
Memoir
“Freese’s characters are brief but hammering case
studies. He can’t help but psychoanalyze the so-called least
of us.”
—David Herrle, scribbler and
founder/editor of
Subtle Tea“Mathias B. Freese has the ability, without mawkishness or
sentimentality, to delve into the darkest struggles of
life.”
Description
Down to a Sunless Sea plunges the reader into
uncomfortable situations and into the minds of troubled characters.
Each selection is a different reading experience—poetic,
journalistic, nostalgic, wryly humorous, and even macabre. An
award-winning essayist and historical novelist, Mathias B. Freese
brings the weight of his twenty-five years as a clinical social
worker and psychotherapist into play as he demonstrates a vivid
understanding of—and compassion toward—the deviant and
damaged.
About the Author
Teacher and psychotherapist Mathias B. Freese holds masters degrees
in secondary education and social work from Queens College of the
City University of New York and Stony Brook University. He is the
author of The i Tetralogy.
Excerpt
Billy was a wiry boy at twelve, and I remember how he got up to the
plate and bounced the Spaldeen several times, its pinkness drawn
repeatedly to his hand from the macadam surface of the schoolyard
as if in gravitational relationship. His bony, knuckled, and
clenched fist was larger than mine and his fingers long and rangy
so when clasped his rasp of knuckles took on the features of the
Andes. He’d cast the ball up with his left hand a few times,
the infield drawing in reflexively and the outfield backing up on
their collective Keds. Ascending from his left hand like a slow
orbiting moon, Billy punched the ball in an overhand strike as if a
carpenter nailing a stud to a stud, once and for all. The ball
sailed high and over second base, often soaring over the center
outfielder’s head, while Billy circuited the infield like a
jackrabbit. He was the complete punchball player, and I admired
this and tried to emulate his talents, to no avail.
In the early ’50s I lived in a housing project in
Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, and Billy lived in a private home off
the Boulevard. Although we attended the same elementary school,
P.S. 195, next to Sheepshead Bay, we lived in different worlds: I
was lower-middle class poor, and didn’t know it, and he was
middle class well-to-do. Neither Billy nor I sensed we were
different in terms of class, nor did I envy his home and quiet
comforts. I did not have that feeling—that came much later.
When you are a young boy, these are not concerns.
I remember once being asked after school into his home. I was
taken by the kitchen which had a dishwasher in it—in the
’50s! There were maple closets and an orderliness to them
that gave me the feeling they were special. I believe Billy’s
parents had “help,” which in those days was always a
black woman. The carpeting beneath my feet was a lush surprise; we
never had that at home—only Kentile. Or linoleum. Well-to-do
people had carpeting, even I knew that. Billy brought me into his
living room. On one wall mirrors hung from ceiling to floor so that
the space seemed enlarged, and I deeply, quietly absorbed the
beauty of such a pretty thing. I was taken with the concept, the
newness of my own limited experience. I said nothing about this to
Billy, ever the observer, the incorporator, the taker-in. It was a
private pleasure I was exposed to—esthetically, above
all.
As I walked back to my house, past the laundry building all the
housewives shared for two or three blocks around, along the
graveled roads in which cars were not allowed, a child’s
paradise, and the cottages themselves, former officer quarters
during World War II, now divided in two for two families, I walked
the dog with my Duncan yo-yo or put it to sleep. I was filled with
being a young boy. I had really been impressed with Billy’s
mirrored wall, and his home, and what he owned in a non-envious,
comradely way, much as if I were pleased with my friend’s
good fortune. I knew a boy whose family had a mirrored wall.
Mom was in a house dress and cooking. She was a short woman, not
diminutive, with firm breasts and a crooked nose that had been
reshaped by a baseball as a child. She asked me where I had been,
which was a snug ritual for both of us. I told her I was at
Billy’s house.
“And. . .?”
“He showed me around his house. He has a dishwasher,
Ma.”
That grabbed her attention. I went on, I thought she was
curious.
“In his living room, Ma, he has mirrors from the ceiling
to floor, the whole side of the wall.”
She looked at me as if I had hurt her, as if I had intended to
hurt her, all of which was untrue. I just wanted to give the news
about my being a boy, about having such a friend. I felt enhanced
by Billy, not diminished.
She said, “If you don’t like it here, you can pack
your things and leave.”
