Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

by Alix Shulman

  Dr. Webber pounced on the question. “Why do you ask?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, I just wondered,” I said, looking intently at the telephone and mentally dialing a number. He was impossible to pin down; already I was sorry to have asked.

  He examined me closely while my cheeks went red and my hands went damp. Then he said, “We have just come to an important—a breakthrough!—discovery with this chess dream. Even if you don’t acknowledge it openly, unconsciously you do acknowledge it. You ask, Do I think you are beautiful? You mean, Do I think you are a woman? Don’t you see? Yes, Sasha, I think you are a woman. I know you are. Now you must begin to accept this in yourself.”

  In his enthusiasm, he sounded positively Viennese. He was clearly too wrapped up in his breakthrough to spare a thought for a poor red pawn like me. My spirit sank as I realized I would never get a straight answer to my question.

  He ranted on. “There is nothing the matter with you, Sasha. You are no ‘freak.’ You are exactly what you were born to be, if you will only open up to Frank and let yourself.”

  It was all so unfair. I was his patient, my father was helping to pay for his vacations, and yet Dr. Webber seemed again to be taking Frank’s side. I began to cry.

  “Yes, Sasha, I have no doubt now that you will soon achieve orgasm on the deepest, most fulfilling level. Cry, go ahead. You are on the threshold of woman’s greatest fulfillment. You are at last beginning to feel. Yes, cry. Feel. When you are fully able to do that, you will be able to give yourself totally to your husband and have that blissful union with him you long for.”

  I stopped listening and blew my nose. My skin would be blotching. I sensed my time was up, though Dr. Webber was too engrossed to his theory to notice. Well, perhaps he wouldn’t notice the blotching either, or the clouds of skin puffing up around my eyes. As I put on my coat, I heard him say,

  “—quite certain that someday you will even feel deeply enough to think about having a family.”

  I turned to leave.

  “Not yet, of course,” I heard him say as I neared the door—I was nowhere near ready yet—but someday, when I wanted to.

  There was nothing to do on shipboard but drink brandy in the bar or snuggle under a blanket on a deck chair rolling with the great waves and try to read until the next meal. Now the next meal would be the last.

  This homeward voyage was different from the outward journey. Back then when the waves rocked the ship I had struggled to keep my balance. That voyage was to have described the largest of the concentric circles on which I had been expanding my universe since that first train ride through the Adirondacks back in the forties. Stuffing the sleeves and pockets of all my clothes with a year’s supply of Tampax (Regular and Super) in case the remote corners of Europe were unsupplied, armed with a select list of people to look up in all the cities of my choice, I had gone to plot my future, rising early each morning to play shuffleboard and participate in the drama of the morning sea.

  And now? The concentric circles were shrinking. My future was doubling back on itself. The seven days at sea (like the summer in Rome, like the year abroad) had come and gone with the salt spray, leaving only a residue of abandoned plans. From Genoa I had written Roxanne of my return, swearing her to secrecy. “Don’t tell Frank I’m coming,” I wrote, and lapsing into our old idiom: “In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” But with no one on board to save me, it was clear even before we sighted the Statue of Liberty standing catatonic in New York’s filthy harbor that I’d be living with Frank again that very night. End of the journey. Unless …

  “I’ve been watching you. Do you mind if I talk to you?”

  At last! I looked up from my book.

  It was the soft-spoken engineer from Brooklyn, seven days too late. I had hardly noticed him since our brief introduction at the champagne sailing party; we had evidently signed up for different sittings.

  “Why should I mind?” I said. He had a gentle, a respectful air.

  “You’re always so preoccupied when I see you up here. I’ve been afraid to intrude. But since we’ll be docking in a few hours, I figured it was now or never. My name’s William Burke, in case you don’t remember.”

  It was a straightforward, low-keyed pitch. I smiled at him.

  “You must be eager to be getting home,” he said, looking off at the deep waves. From out on the ocean we all called it home, no matter how we felt.

  “Not really,” I confided. “I’m actually dreading it. In fact, I have a strong impulse to stow away some place on board and go right back to Europe. What about you?”

  He looked straight into my eyes. “My impulse,” he said softly but without the slightest hesitation, “is to follow your impulse.”

  The sentiment, so softly expressed, was enough to trigger the appalling flow of lust. I lowered my eyes. It took so little. However often it happened, I was always unprepared; abashed to discover that so-delicate mechanism reacting despite me.

  A confused shout and a rush of passengers to the rail came to my rescue. People began hugging one another and leaping around like children.

  “Someone’s sighted land,” said William Burke.

  “Do you see it?” I asked.

  “No. But then, it’s not what we’re looking for, is it?”

  Again. Sinking stomach, confusion. How crudely my body behaved. “We’d better go down for breakfast,” I said, not really wanting to leave the deck but desperate to say something. Why hadn’t he come forward a week earlier?

  My chivalrous friend touched my elbow and led me down.

  We exchanged addresses. “Maybe we can get together in the City,” said William Burke.

  “You know, I’m married,” I answered, liking my candor but loathing my message.

  “Oh? Where’s your husband?”

  “We’ve been separated,” I said, trying to salvage something. “He’s in New York. We’re going to try to work out an arrangement.”

  “Well, if you do, perhaps he’ll join us for lunch, then.”

  Not until much later, on the dock awaiting customs inspection, did we see each other again—far too late to be of any use. Once I got home I would have to behave myself—or else what was the point of going back? Indecision was unpardonable at this late date. Anyway, I had tried it alone and failed. From under our respective letters, B and R, we waved to one another; after that I avoided looking over at him.

  “Anything to declarer’ asked the customs inspector. I wasn’t prepared for declarations. He looked from my two suitcases to me and back again. Since Spain, my two bags contained all I possessed.”

  “Nothing. Six packs of Bleus,” I said, opening my purse. He gave me an indulgent smile and chalked my bags without examining them, leaving me free to re-enter New York.

  I looked quickly around the cavernous dock. Afraid Frank might be lying in wait for me. No one in sight.

  With a last gesture of independence I avoided the redcaps and lugged my bags outside myself, but I knew I hadn’t the muscle for an independent life. The taxis and trucks were speeding along Twelfth Avenue exactly as they had before I left. Everything was exactly the same—as though I didn’t exist. No matter how grand my schemes or fanciful my ambitions, my year abroad hadn’t dented the universe.

  I hailed a taxi, gave the driver Frank’s address, and headed uptown to the mate, as the saying goes, I deserved.

  Seven

  “Who’s William Burke, Sasha? We’re invited to a party,” said Frank, examining the invitation.

  “Burke? I don’t know. A party? Let’s see.”

  I had been back less than two months, but it felt like years. Frank and I each had new jobs—he teaching at N.Y.U., I clipping and filing in an ad agency. We had a new apartment, spacious and rent-controlled, with a freezer compartment for me and a study for Frank. But though we had vowed to “try harder” and “start again,” our hearts weren’t in it.

  The formal invitation was from
someone named Hector Crockett announcing a party for “friends and associates” of him and William Burke, to celebrate their partnership in a new business firm. R.S.V.P.

  “He must be the man I met on the ship coming home.”

  “A business party?” sneered Frank. “Did you take up with a businessman?”

  From a matrimonial dead end a party is at least a place to turn around. “If it seems like slumming to you, I’ll be glad to go without you,” I returned.

  The day of the party, I bought a new dress—a black silk sheath I’d been seeing in the window of a little shop on Lexington Avenue—and against all my principles, desperate to be new, I had my hair done in a beauty parlor, molded into a smooth French twist. Though Frank scoffed suspiciously at my primping, when we set out in the snow for the subway he took my arm with the old pride.

  We were both a little intimidated when someone opened the door and invited us in. I was wearing clumsy galoshes over my elegant Italian shoes, and did not know whether to leave them outside or take them in. I’d never before seen East Side bachelor quarters, though I’d been working in New York offices for years. A new country, only blocks from work. A bar in a corner, fashionable people, white furniture, flowers.

  Hector Crockett introduced himself, and Frank told him what we were drinking. As I took off my coat, aware of my hair twisted artfully on my head and my first resort to mascara, I sensed new possibilities. Was this party perhaps a bonus from my genie? One extra last chance?

  William Burke was carving turkey in the dining room. As soon as I saw him, I took Frank over to introduce them.

  “Hi there. I’m so glad you came.” He clasped both my hands as though we were dear old friends before retrieving one of them to extend to Frank for the ritual male handshake. “Glad to meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard about you.”

  “How do you do, William?” said Frank.

  “My friends call me Will,” he smiled, “or” (to me) “Willy.”

  The table was spread with ham, potato salad, seeded rye, gherkins and olives. Frank popped an olive into his mouth, then asked awkwardly in the donnish voice he reserved for inferiors, “What sort of business are you starting?”

  “It’s a consulting firm. Computer systems. I suppose your wife told you I’m an engineer. Hector’s the brains of it; I’m only a technician. Hector says it’s the coming field. You should really ask him.”

  Hector approached with our drinks. “Are you the Franklin Raybel who wrote that piece on the German Question for Intersection?”

  Frank’s eyes lit up. “Yes.”

  “I’m glad to get a chance to talk to you,” said Hector, swiveling Frank around; and in a moment they disappeared as though by prearrangement.

  As soon as they were gone, Willy started to feed me turkey. First he took a perfectly carved slice of breast, rolled it skillfully around a gherkin, and slipped it into my mouth. “Surprised to hear from me?” he asked.

  I swallowed the turkey, my heart tripping, then rolled one for him. “Very.”

  Then he rolled another for me, and I for him, until it seemed an improper way to carry on.

  My antennae picked up Frank in a corner keeping me under secret surveillance. I excused myself. For the next hour I stayed out of the dining room so Willy wouldn’t think I was looking for him, but at the same time, I tried to stand where I could be seen.

  It was a good party, even though I was too self-conscious to enjoy it. The records were mostly old jazz and blues—Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, Hector’s specialty I later learned. There was a man there who had programmed a computer to play chess, and a woman who had tended bar in Paris, and a lot of funny stories going around to which I paid less attention than necessary and laughed overlong.

  Once, a little before midnight, I walked into the kitchen for ice and unexpectedly came upon Will there. I behaved like a child caught at the cookie jar.

  “Oh! Excuse me!” I felt myself flush.

  A sprig of mistletoe hung only three feet away, at the entrance to the dining room, but nothing came of it. Hastily I got my ice and retreated out the same door through which I had entered.

  I flipped through a pile of records for something to do.

  “Soothe me with your caress, sweet lotus blossom,” bellowed Jimmy Witherspoon to Omer Simeon’s clarinet. “Even though I know it’s just a fantasy—”

  “What’s a lovely thing like you doing off here in a corner?” asked someone as though I were single and available.

  A couple we had known years before at Columbia walked in late in the evening. They were old admirers of Frank. “What are you doing here?” they asked me, and “How was Europe?”

  “You look sensational, Sasha,” said the husband. “Travel evidently does more than just improve the mind.”

  “I love your hairdo, Sasha, I love your shoes,” said my enemy his wife.

  “Where’s Frank? I hear he’s teaching downtown now.”

  “He’s around here someplace,” I said scanning the room. And then suddenly I caught sight of Willy Burke laughing his big, good-natured laugh in a corner with a pair of women I didn’t know and I wanted to leave.

  Frank was sitting bored and superior on a sofa. “Let’s go soon, okay?” I said.

  “I’m ready to go any time you are,” he answered with that indifference he tried to pass off as accommodation.

  After we found our coats and galoshes, we approached Hector and then Willy for goodbyes.

  “It was good to see you again,” said Willy. “Maybe we can all get together for lunch one of these days.”

  “Sounds great,” I said. Frank beside me smiled his all-suffering smile and turned to the door.

  That night before going to sleep I put a net over my hair, hoping to preserve the professional French twist one day more. It didn’t work. I must have had torturous dreams, for when I woke Sunday afternoon, hairpins were scattered on my pillow and my hair was undone. Hearing Frank typing in another room, I surmised we wouldn’t be going out that day anyway. I took the rest of the pins out of my hair, piling them on the night table beside me. Pulling the covers over my disheveled head, I retreated into sleep, sorry I had awakened.

  • • •

  Each time the phone rang in Clayton Advertising’s “research library,” where I sat with two women named Joan clipping competitors’ ads from magazines, I rushed to answer it. For three days it was only the account executives demanding instant information. “Hi, doll. Get me a list of all the urban markets in Illinois with over 35,000 population. And hurry. I need it before two. In triplicate. That’s a good girl.” But on the fourth morning—a cold, wet Thursday—it was he.

  “Sasha Raybel? This is Willy Burke.”

  I was already smiling when I picked up the phone, hoping it would be he.

  “Does your name have a C in it?” he asked jovially.

  “No. No C. How did you find my number at work?”

  “I have my sources. I’m calling to ask you, are you free for lunch?”

  “Today?”

  I wanted to say no. I had expected to have some notice. I knew I didn’t look the way I had at the party, and he would be disappointed. There were weekday circles under my eyes and other imperfections. I had on a coarse white turtleneck perpetually dirty at the cuffs, and my hair, pulled carelessly back, was tied with a shabby scarf. A ghastly quarter of a century old. Nevertheless, feeling that itch it was hypocritical to deny, despite my qualms and vows, I accepted.

  “I’m free. But I don’t have much of a lunch hour. From twelve to one exactly.”

  “I’ll pick you up in the lobby of your building at twelve sharp So long, lotus blossom.”

  We sat across from each other in one of those little restaurants too elegant to hire waitresses, where the waiters recite the menu and place on each table a basket woven of pasta filled with pommes soufflées. The headwaiter knew Will and was so discreet in overlooking me and my wedding ring that I figured he was used to such lunches.


  “If you put yourself in my hands, I’ll see that you have a delicious meal,” said Will.

  “But can’t you see I’m already in your hands?” I answered coyly. However shabby my sweater, I could still use my eyes with the old bus-stop swagger.

  We flirted outright over a martini. (“Do you usually have lunch with married women?” “Hardly ever. Do you usually go to lunch with single men?” “Never.” “Then shall we make it our secret?”) Until quite unexpectedly, staring deep into the hole in the olive in my second drink, I saw straight through to the inevitable end and wanted to leave.

  “What do you want with me?” I asked with an impermissible seriousness.

  “I? Why, to enjoy you,” answered Will.

  His answer, appropriately airy, made it worse. I was sick of affairs; I had grown old being enjoyed.

  “Let’s enjoy this lunch and then forget it,” I said, straining for levity. But even that was presumptuous, for he had not yet suggested anything more than one lunch. Squeezing the universe into a ball, I had lost my appetite.

  “Don’t be silly. I expect to be waiting for you in the lobby of your building tomorrow at noon.”

  “Well, don’t,” I said. “I really don’t want to see you again.” Oh God, a voice inside reproached me, must you women always get so serious? And on a first date, too?

  “You seemed to be enjoying yourself well enough until approximately two minutes ago. What happened?” He looked puzzled.

  “Nothing.”

  It was too absurd for me to sit there pouting. Martinis were the end of me. How could I explain that I was only a fake adventuress?—a nice girl who wanted all or nothing.

  On Will’s face was the same incredulity I had seen whenever I’d tried to say no. Jan Pulaski had had it, and Mr. Winograd, and Leonardo, and others I couldn’t remember. It was a look that made me feel obliged to sleep with any man who had taken the trouble to buy me a cup of coffee.

  Suddenly an unexpected insight lit up Willy’s face. “Why, you’re the poor little rich girl. Your trouble is you’ve obviously never been pursued. So lovely and so neglected. Well, lotus blossom,” he announced, breaking into a confident smile, “get ready for a new experience. I am going to pursue you.”