by Lee Siegel
After two months, Gretchen and I ran out of money. We had a few hundred dollars left over beyond our traveling expenses. Naively assuming that at least one of us would find work in Norway before our money ran out, we thought that our small fund would carry us through. By the end of November, after spending on food, small gifts now and then for Elsa and Gyorg, and the occasional trip to a café in Arendal, the money was gone. I could not bring myself to write to my mother to ask for her help. When I had told her we were going to Norway to start a new life, she laughed. Do you think you can run away from your troubles, Mr. Kafka? she said. As for Gretchen asking her mother for money, that was impossible. Half the few hundred dollars we had brought with us had come from her as a gift. On her nurse’s salary and her husband’s income as a self-employed electrician, she had just enough money to support Gretchen’s two younger sisters and younger brother, all of whom lived at home.
I still read and wrote all day and for much of the night, but it was becoming more difficult to gather up the will to write. The closer we came to running out of money, the harder we tried to find a job that would have been under the official radar. Piece by piece, our struggles to find work chipped away at the ice and snow that had concealed our misfittedness.
In our exuberant optimism, I had told Gretchen’s family that I was expecting money from a story I had sent out to a magazine. One day Elsa asked, with hope and cheer, if the money was on its way, and we admitted that the story hadn’t been bought in the end. This made Elsa sad for us, but another patch was cleared. Gradually, the heat of our desperation melted what was left of the blessedly obscuring ice and snow. After that, I was Lee Siegel once again. It didn’t matter to me that Gretchen’s family had come to accept me. I felt that they had accepted me on false premises.
There was one small consolation. As we grew more transparent, our Norwegian began to improve. By the time, in mid-December, that we were all packed and ready for our trip back to New Jersey, by the time the magic spell of opacity had worn off, by the time I could barely write and began to lie awake at night worrying about how we would survive once back in New Jersey—by then, Gretchen and I were able to communicate with her family in Norwegian without any trouble at all.
7
SEND MONEY, KAFKA!
Why do we experience events that change our lives in an instant as if they are happening in a dream? A car accident, the death of someone you love, the news that you have lost your job, your husband of thirty years suddenly punching you in the face one morning at breakfast—that is when reality comes crashing into our existence stronger than it ever has. Yet we feel that these catastrophic moments are dreamlike. It is our everyday reality, though, that is the true stuff of dreams. Habits; routines; assumptions that life will continue without change; presumptions that the people in our lives will not change, disappear, or die; plans for the future; expectations that our desires will be fulfilled and our ambitions realized—none of this reflects the constant flux, surprise, and disappointment that we know, in our bones, constitute the essence of what is real. But we never describe our fragile illusion of stability as being like a dream, not until our lives are almost finished. Then we say that life went by so quickly, as if in a dream! Is it only at the end of life that we see life as it really is? Or is the end of life, as it rushes upon us, one of those catastrophic experiences—the grandaddy of them all—that imparts to the rest of our life a dreamlike quality?
Of course there are those other dreams, hopes, and wishes that are not dreams at all but pillars of our reality, no matter how fantastical they are. My dream of making a life as a reader and a writer without a college degree was the stabilizing premise of my existence. Yet it led me into a stone wall of actuality that had the effect of making me feel like I was in a dream.
The night after we returned from Norway, Gretchen and I found ourselves in the kitchen of Audrey Castor. Castor had backed me up against the sink in her kitchen. She was slapping me lightly in the face, first one cheek, then the other.
* * *
I had called my mother from the airport. She was expecting us. We had nowhere else to go. Like me, Gretchen was in transition from one life to another—from the suburban girl with few opportunities to the artist struggling to find an opening in the world—and she had no friends close enough for us to prevail upon to put us up. In my case, I could not bring myself to call the few friends I had remained close to. In some symmetrical transfer of energy, the Norwegian sojourn that had used up my opacity there endowed me with a new layer of opacity back in New Jersey. Who knew what process of transformation I had undergone across the ocean? I preferred meeting new people to reuniting with the friends who could, so I feared, see right through me. As for Paul, I could not forgive him for asking us to leave his apartment before we set out for Norway. Gretchen’s insistence that he was torn and doing what he had to do for the sake of his own happiness had no effect on the hostility I felt toward him.
This left my mother. In the past, she had often come through for me up to a point, after which she tipped over into madness and destruction. The trick was for me to catch her while she was performing the role of my mother, which she did from time to time if she was in revolt against Angelo, or angry at Nathan. Arriving at her house, I told myself that I had to make sure to gauge the moment when her emotional needs began to transform her from mother into rival, or adversary. Then I would make my escape.
She opened the door and greeted us with a flurry of “sweeties” and “darlings,” shedding a few tears here and there. It was late in the evening. You look tired, she said. She offered us some water. I have no coffee, she said. I have to go shopping tomorrow. Then she told us the bad news: we could not stay with her. There was not enough room now that Angelo and his children had moved in. More tears. Sweetie, honey, she said to Gretchen, touching Gretchen’s knee, please understand. I would give my right arm to have you here. But—she lowered her voice in a conspiratorial, accusatory whisper—Angelo brought all three of his children. She tossed her head in the direction of the bedrooms with contempt, as if not allowing us to stay in her house put her and us on the moral high ground. They’ve spread themselves out all over, she said with distaste. I gazed around the kitchen and into part of the dining room. She was right about the house being in other hands. Though not a stick of furniture had changed, I could no longer recognize the house where I grew up.
I began to stand up when my mother said, Sit down, honey. I have an idea. Since her husband died some years ago, Audrey Castor has been living in a nice-size house all by herself. I’m sure she would be happy to have you stay there until you both get on your feet. Especially, my mother said, her drooping, tired face slowly lightening into a smile, after everything that I’ve told her about you.
* * *
The gap between rich and poor attracts so much commentary that a visitor from another planet would think the two classes were constantly at each other’s throat. In fact the gap is so great that the poor never get the opportunity to clash with the rich. The poor live too far away from them. Within classes is where you get the most violent antagonisms, the way children who are well mannered in school will come home and fight their siblings tooth and nail.
When my mother characterized Audrey Castor’s house as large, she was, as usual, exaggerating someone’s good fortune. It was hard for me to tell whether she did this cluelessly or with the intention of subtly putting the person in her place. Audrey Castor’s house was about half the size of my mother’s house. It was a saltbox with two bedrooms on a street with similar houses.
Castor herself was about fifteen years older than my mother, who was in her late forties. She had a block-shaped face. Her iron-gray hair had been cropped with almost military efficiency. Wearing loose dark pants, a windbreaker, and white tennis shoes, she was constantly bustling about the house, leaving in her small Ford, returning, then leaving again. After brusquely saying hello to Gretchen, she never looked at her again.
Alongside Castor, my mother did
indeed resemble the movie-star image she harbored in that eternally childish corner of herself. My mother must have sensed, with her ultrasensitive antennae for all the degrees of self-abasement, that putting herself down was the only way to maintain the balance of their friendship. How Audrey must have drawn sustenance from my mother’s tales of woe and humiliation! How my mother, having recoiled from the effects of abasing herself, then must have showered Audrey with compliments: You look stunning in that windbreaker! Cinderella should have such sneakers!
From the moment we woke up the next morning, Castor channeled her agitated energy into her encounter with me. Insisting that we sit at her kitchen table, she served us coffee and bagels. I know how you people enjoy your bagels, she said to me. Then she began to draw me into a conversation about my future. Her conviction that she was doing the virtuous thing had clearly justified her instant intimacy with me. Behind her wise counsel was my mother’s list of grievances against me, and behind her aggression was Lola’s proclamation of my world-historical talents.
You need to go back to Montclair, Audrey said. Writing is not for you. Look at you. Look at what your writing has gotten you. Nothing. Not a penny to your name. Just like Monroe. Just like your father.
I was speechless for a moment. Have you ever met my father? I snapped at her.
Oh, look at this, she said. A regular sabra. A regular little Israeli soldier. No, I never met your father. Your mother told me everything I want to know about your father. About how he sold all your savings bonds from your bar mitzvah. About how he tried to take the house from your mother.
Let’s go, Gretchen said to me.
I stood up to take my coffee mug over to the sink. For some reason, in my rage and confusion, I wanted to show Castor that, unlike my father, I fulfilled my obligations. She followed me across the kitchen. When I turned around after depositing the mug, she pressed me against the sink.
You are a bad boy, she said, tapping my face with her open hand. You are a bad little Jewish boy.
She was nearly as tall as I was. Beyond her I could see Gretchen rising from her chair at the kitchen table. She was trembling. I had never seen her like that. She had the shaking rage of the gentle soul who does not have a temper. Her eyes had contracted, like a cat’s. Yet there was panic in them, as if her mind could not control what her body was doing. I saw her advance toward Castor and raise her mug in the air. I caught her eye and Gretchen stopped and glared at her.
She’s not going to help you, Castor said, seeing me look at Gretchen. She doesn’t need this shit from you, she said. She’s a shiksa, right? She’s a blond shiksa. She doesn’t need this from you. She opened a drawer from under the counter and took out a steak knife. Waving it in front of my face, she said, Why are you such a bad son? Because you have a bad father?
Slowly I raised my hand and closed it around her wrist, just below the knife. I began to pull her arm down and away from my face. I didn’t want to hurt her and I didn’t want her to hurt Gretchen or me. I just wanted us to escape. I despised my mother for leading me into a situation where I nearly got killed in the Dodge Dart, and for putting me in this kitchen with Audrey Castor. In her frantic efforts to save herself she had gravitated toward refrigerator-sentiment people, toward anyone who gratified her need for easy attachment by means of sticky feelings. She kept sacrificing me to these people who seemed to love her so instantly and who treated her with contempt because she needed their love. Castor smiled at me as I pulled down her arm. She brought her mouth close to mine so that our lips were almost touching. She stared at me and I stared back. After a minute or so, the situation became too absurd to continue. She stepped away from me.
Go back to school, she said with a show of stern affection, as if she had contrived the entire incident for the purpose of representing my mother’s interests and making me more serious about life; as if that was the only decent thing for her to do. Don’t break your mother’s heart, she said.
I took Gretchen’s arm. The two of us walked back to the small bedroom. We locked the door and sat holding each other on the bed. After we heard Audrey leave, I went to the phone near the front door and called Angelo at his school. Though he sounded wary, and put out at being disturbed at work, he listened solemnly as I told him what had happened. Sit tight, he said. An hour later, he picked us up and drove us in silence away from Castor’s house.
I believed that so long as I did not make myself yet another plague on his vulnerable nerves, Angelo would do what he could to help me. In this case, all he had to do was convince my mother to allow us to stay in the den or the basement for a week or so, until I could find another job or jobs in the malls. I turned to Gretchen, who was sitting in the backseat. She placed her hand on my shoulder for a moment before withdrawing it. After a few minutes, Angelo turned onto the highway. Then he pulled off into the parking lot of a motel. It was the one cheap motel in Paramus, right across the highway from Alexander’s.
I can give you enough money to stay for a week, Angelo said. He got out of the car, removed our bags from the trunk, and set them down on the parking lot. Cars were racing by on the highway. I wondered if anyone I knew or had been to high school with saw me. After that, Angelo said, I can’t help you. He took some bills out of his wallet, handed them to me without looking at me, and sat back in the car. Good luck, he said to me, extending his hand, which I mechanically shook. And if I were you, he said, smiling at me with that gentle air of complicity, I wouldn’t tell your mother about what happened with Audrey. Then he drove off.
* * *
The motel was forty dollars a night. Angelo, in his rush to help us out as quickly as possible, had only given me a hundred and twenty. Thanks to Gretchen’s mother, who brought us eighty dollars after we called her as a last resort, we were able to stay for five days. She also lent us her car, an old station wagon with a manual shift on the steering column that only Gretchen knew how to drive. We would not have lasted in the motel much beyond a week anyway. The sheets had large stains on them and were stiff in places. Pubic hair was all over them. We stripped the sheets off the bed, turned the discolored mattress over, and slept on that. I thought of calling Einman, but I did not want him to see me in such a despondent state. We might have to go live in the park, I said to Gretchen in an anxious joke one night as we lay on the mattress on the floor, trying to sleep amid the constant whoosh of cars on the highway.
Not wanting to spend any more time in the motel room than we had to, we left in the morning as soon as it became light. We drove to a donut place where we sat drinking coffee until the malls opened and I could make the rounds once again, looking for work. Within a few days, thanks to my experience at Herman’s, I found a job selling shoes at a small store called Fit to Be Tied, located in one of the Paramus malls. Gretchen landed a part-time job as a waitress at a Howard Johnson’s on Route 4, not far from our motel.
Fortified by seemingly stable jobs, we went looking for an apartment. Gretchen’s mother promised to help us out with the deposit and the first month’s rent. She probably had to dip into some sort of savings account that she had set up apart from her joint finances with her husband. She continued to regard me with wary puzzlement, as if prepared for any sudden gesture I might make that could put her daughter’s life in mortal danger. But since Gretchen had thrown her lot in with mine so wholeheartedly, her mother had decided that the most effective way to keep Gretchen safe was to try as well as she could to protect both of us. I sometimes felt, to my embarrassment, that I was a cobeneficiary along with Gretchen’s father of her wise tolerance. Fairly quickly we were able to find a tiny studio in a three-story apartment building in Bergenfield, about fifteen minutes from Paramus.
* * *
Fit to Be Tied was a women’s shoe store. I worked full-time, five days a week. Sometimes I had the early shift, and sometimes the evening shift, which began in the late afternoon and ended at nine at night. Still resolved, though shaken, to make a life for myself as a reader and a writer without re
turning to college, I had told Tim, the store manager, that I wished to build a career at the store. So long as I remained committed to the job, Tim and the other salesmen there—the reasoning went that women were more likely to be flattered by a man into purchasing shoes than by a woman, and this proved to be correct—found my frequent allusions to culture endearing and entertaining. I made them in order to remind myself of who I was and who I aspired to be. Whenever my pride reared up, and I gave the impression that I had aspirations beyond ambitions at the store, they began to regard me with defensive disdain. To protect myself, I fell back into the old role of clown. Standing in the back of the store, in the doorway of the stockroom, I would proceed to imagine what various customers were thinking as they tried on shoes. I did this in different accents, depending on the particular customer’s ethnic background.
The erotic atmosphere of buying and selling things that I had felt working in Alexander’s was a full-blown reality at Fit to Be Tied. Tim’s deputy, Anthony, an Italian American with a muscular pot belly and perpetual stubble, and Patrick, Anthony’s slight, handsome Irish American pal, sometimes had sex with various customers in the stockroom in exchange for shoes. Women love shoes, Anthony said to me with a self-satisfied smile. With the exception of Tim, who was the store’s royalty and thus bound to his position as austere overseer, having sex with customers was part of the culture of the place. You should try it, Anthony said. I don’t think anyone is very interested in me, I said. We’ll fix you up, he said. I told him I was shy. Shy? he repeated. The expression on his face was about to tip over into that derisive disdain. You know, I said, Gretchen keeps me busy. Anthony and the others remained suspicious. I related all this to Gretchen, who shook her head in contempt. One warm spring afternoon she surprised me by coming into the store dressed in a halter top, denim shorts, and clogs. After that, instead of goading me into the store’s debauched atmosphere—they felt some high-minded disapproval in my demurral and could not tolerate it—Anthony and Patrick apparently decided to impose a limit on my success with women and kept me away from the more fetching customers. This was for my own good, they told me. Still, the sexual atmosphere was so present and so intense that I sometimes disappeared into the men’s room to masturbate when an attractive woman came in for shoes. Getting lost in some imaginary future encounter as if it was happening in that very moment, I finished quickly, with excitement. Afterward I felt drained and exhausted. It was a while before I could look people in the eye while talking with them.