So when The Italian proposed (actually, he said, “Do you, um…maybe…want to get married…someday?”), all I could think of was that letter.
“How about next week?” I piped up.
He was somewhat taken aback, but I was desperate to have Mark with me. Maybe it would be possible with a husband, I thought. Round out the old family life, that sort of thing.
Not a good reason to get married. Neither is having regular orgasms.
Something I hadn’t paid much attention to along the way—distracted as I was by the orgasms and all—was that The Italian had a chronic postnasal drip that caused him to make this…snort.
Well, I paid attention to it now. Criminy, did I pay.
One day, we were in a Greenwich Village restaurant and he was doing the snorting thing. Right there in front of people. I looked at the clock on the wall and timed the snorts. One every forty seconds. And I thought, How am I going to stand this?
That’s 2,110 snorts a day…14,770 snorts a week…770,150 snorts a year.
For as long as we both shall live.
Yee-ikes. Would somebody please pass the Valium?
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Blessed be the ties that bind.”
—FONTAYNE JACKSON, AT HIS LYNCHING
Every now and then, as I lounge in bed eating a lovely breakfast—mango, muffin, black tea—I think of the thousands of breakfasts I have cooked. How, when, and for whom. And that breaks open one particular crystal-clear memory: Making Breakfast for The Italian.
I learned quickly how to crack two eggs without breaking the yellows; splash them lightly with bacon grease till they were beautifully white but still quivery; gingerly turn them with my New Homemaker spatula without disturbing their lovely shape; remove them at precisely the right moment, sliding them oh-so-carefully onto the spanking-clean plate; add two strips of flawlessly sizzled bacon, and—voilà!—the final touch: half a tomato hot from the broiler, decorated with a sprig of fresh parsley. And, of course, toast. Tawny brown. The pot of coffee. The pitcher of juice. Every morning.
Except when I made pancakes.
Or waffles.
Or French toast.
Also perfectly done.
On the Egg and Bacon Mornings, if I accidentally broke a yellow, the infraction was never overlooked by my meticulous spouse. To this day, I can hear his quiet pronouncement:
“You broke. The egg.”
This implied that breakfast was now ruined, and I had been irredeemably careless and would probably go to hell. So nowadays, as I nibble at my mini-muffin, I fantasize about slowly upending the plate over his head, and as the broken yellows slide sinuously through his thinning waves and the tomato seeds drip into his ears, I chirp cheerfully, “Bon appétit, y’all!”
Each marriage—and each affair—holds particular culinary memories for me. The Italian Episode (and I use “Episode” here much as a doctor treating epilepsy: “Has he had any Episodes lately?”) was noted for its highly regimented breakfasts and for two dishes concocted by His Nibs: Fettuccini Alfredo and kidneys in cream, each of which he prepared twice a year. These infrequent respites from my wifely duties were not given as time off for good behavior, as is the case in any decent penitentiary, but rather came up unexpectedly when he felt the urge to cook. He’d worked as a waiter at a popular Italian restaurant and apparently picked up these two tricks there. (As much as it pains me, I shall exercise restraint and not make a cheap joke here.)
Or maybe he learned them from his mother, one of the most gifted kitchen wizards ever born. She made heavenly pasta from scratch, delectable meats, cakes as sweet as that sweet lady herself, so light they had to be weighted down with rocks. I’d sit at her table and weep with gratitude for the extraordinary taste marvels she set before us. Her husband, The Italian’s dad and role model, would take a bite and sourly remark, “You ruined the meatballs, stupid.”
This while actual tears of bliss ran into my spaghetti!
I am what’s known as an “extreme taster,” meaning I experience a heightened reaction from my taste buds. (We did a taster test in a college zoology class; one of my parents came out “taster,” one tested “extreme taster,” and my sister’s litmus paper tested “cuter than a bug.”) Exquisite tastes move me to tears of rapture the way great art does. In Florence I stood before Michelangelo’s David and wept helplessly. It was the only time I’d ever witnessed man-made perfection (not counting Raquel Welch). Of course, this tendency for waterworks gets a little embarrassing, but it’s not a big problem, since truly heavenly tastes come along so rarely. I never worried about disgracing myself over the cuisine at glitzy showbiz banquets. The food at those swanky Hollywood affairs generally falls short of what you’d expect, given both the amount spent and the overblown importance of such events. (In other words, it sucks.)
But back to the fettuccini and the kidneys.
The Italian’s fettuccini was superb. Full of cream and butter. As for the kidneys, this was my virgin encounter with that concoction. Never had it before, ate it many times during our marriage, and haven’t tasted it since. Not that it wasn’t good. The man slaved over those smelly kidneys for half an hour, patiently trimming away the stringy white gristle, making them fit to be immersed in the cream and…my God, that must have been fattening! But we were young. It was the sixties. We gobbled bacon and eggs, kidneys in cream sauce, Fettuccini Alfredo. I baked chocolate-chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, sugar cookies, and Mark’s favorite, orange poppyseed cake. We had ice cream for dessert—Lordy! How did we stay so svelte? Now I look cross-eyed at 2 percent milk and can’t zip my Levi’s. And cream? Please! I don’t even buy eggs anymore unless I have houseguests, or if I need them for the odd recipe.
Bea Arthur contends that all my recipes are odd. Bea is a super cook, and so was Estelle. As for Betty White and me—our talents lie…ahem…elsewhere. (We can tap-dance.)
My father still wanted his fried eggs for breakfast when he was ninety.
“Bill, they’re not good for you,” I said.
He just smiled rakishly and smacked his lips.
The Italian and I were married in a brief civil ceremony on a cold spring afternoon in April 1965. We drove up the coast of Maine for a three-day honeymoon. The first evening, we stopped at a little restaurant out at the end of a peninsula. I had fish. What kind of fish, I don’t remember. But definitely fish. Back at the motel, I threw up most of the night. Frankly, I don’t think it was the fish. I think my subconscious was saying, “Kid, there’s something fishy here.”
He insisted we have sex every night. Because he wanted it. For the most part, that was okay, because he was a different person during sex, warm and sweet, not at all like he was while vertical. During our interminable heated arguments, he was utterly alien—harsh as barbwire, unyielding as a toothache. He insisted we not go to sleep until I agreed with him, whatever the difference of opinion. And not in a “let’s not go to sleep angry” way—it was more like Stockholm syndrome, where a captive is eventually conditioned to admit that black is white, up is down, in is out. This lasted seven years, the longest of my first five marriages. But only because I dug in my heels and doggedly refused to give up. I’d had two divorces and was darned if I’d have another one—ever. Ever, ever, EVER!
While Mark was finishing out first grade in Ardmore, I played the wife, Linda, opposite Vincent Gardenia’s Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman at Moorestown Theater in New Jersey. I was really too young for Linda, but the plum role was too good to resist. With only one week to prepare that complex play, we worked on blocking and our characters’ motivations during rehearsal, then gathered in the lobby afterward, running lines for hours. I came to admire Mr. Gardenia as an actor and a fine person. Vincent was also impressed with me.
“You’d be ideal for summer at the Hampton Playhouse,” he told me, and put in a good word with the owners, Al Christi and John Vari, who hired me for three months, to begin in June. The Italian was hired at a playhouse in Minnesota and
was upset that we’d be spending the summer apart.
“That’s showbiz,” I pointed out. “I’m just happy we’re both employed.”
And I was! Happy as a clam. He was as happy as a—oh, how about a piranha?
I loved the Hampton Playhouse! The whole cast lived in a three-story house run by a delightful lady named Maddie. We had one week to prepare each play, which ran for a week while we rehearsed the next one. Demanding, to say the least. One week, Mary, Mary, the next, Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath, then Tobacco Road—with real dirt covering the stage, which set off my hay fever something fierce.
The first week, Al and John threw a get-acquainted party for the cast and crew at Maddie’s and, to my utter surprise, The Italian suddenly showed up. He hadn’t liked the Midwestern summer stock company. Disgruntled, he took his suitcase up to my room, I following.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. Why don’t you come down and meet everyone?” I cajoled. “Come on. The party’s in full swing. It’ll be fun.”
I introduced him around and got him some food, and everyone welcomed him heartily, full of high spirits, laughing. I was having a swell time kibitzing with my castmates, full of joie de vivre, when Husband came over and instructed me to say goodnight.
“Come up to the room with me now.”
“I need to get to know the company,” I said. “Let’s stay a little longer.”
“We’re newly married. You should be with me. Right now!”
Crestfallen, I said goodnight to everyone and slunk upstairs. He remained miserable and hard to get along with the rest of the summer. I learned and performed some challenging roles, doing my best not to be distracted by Little Caesar’s dampening presence.
“Come Take a Bite of My Apple” in Burlesque, The Hampton Playhouse, 1965.
“We’d like you to come back next summer,” John and Al told me at the end of the season. “We’ll find some parts for your spouse, if that makes your decision easier.”
Boy, did it! Maybe if he were acting, he’d be less of a horse’s patootie. We returned to New York and Mother brought Mark up to start second grade. I had located a good school on East Eighty-second Street, only two blocks from our rent-controlled fifth-floor walk-up on East Eightieth. Mark made a friend right away: Phillip Arndt, a tall, handsome boy who was half Chilean Indian. We moved uptown, and oh, was I glad to get out of The Italian’s gloomy apartment with its black velvet drapes and bathtub in the kitchen! I hoped maybe our married relationship would improve.
Oh, ha ha, and ha. Sure.
The apartment on East Eightieth had a mouse-size bathroom, no room for a kitchen table, bedrooms barely big enough for a bed and chest of drawers. I asked Husband if he could build a small kitchen table on hinges to lower and raise from the kitchen wall and a similar piece for Mark’s bedroom on which to attach his Marklin train track, which I’d bought at FAO Schwarz the previous Christmas. To my surprise, Husband built those two tables quite well. I’d had no idea he could do carpentry. We scrounged old furniture from friends and from the street: a sofa, chair, two kitchen chairs, some lamps, two beds, and other sundries.
I found two big trunks on the curb and painted one green and one blue. The blue one functioned as Mark’s toy box. We used the green one as a table in the living room, and in it I kept Mark’s drawings. Unearthly creatures in violent combat. Dinosaurs fighting to the death. I still have his meticulously made flip pads of stories—the kind you flip through to make a “movie” appear—most of which ended violently. Those drawings worried me. They were so full of turmoil. On our little black-and-white TV, Mark watched Popeye, Mighty Mouse, Bull-winkle. Heroes fighting evil. Does that tell you something? It told me something.
A clothing budget was out of the question, but one day I ran across an ancient cast-iron Singer sewing machine, which I bought for forty dollars on layaway. Those were the days of minidresses way above the knee; simple designs that could be made from two yards of material. I stood outside store windows sketching dresses I liked, then cut patterns from newspaper. I scouted out some fabric for a dollar a yard—linings fifty-nine cents, thread and finishing tape for pennies—and voilà! Three new summer dresses for less than four bucks each! All the same design, but various fabrics for a different look. People stopped me on the street to remark on my little white eyelet frock with yellow flowers. That eyelet number was the winner. I wonder if I still have it. My Shirley Temple doll might fit into it, or I could use it for a sleeve. I couldn’t make men’s shirts or pants, but I did whip up a short Japanese kimono for The Italian. He didn’t like it, but I thought it was snazzy and wore it a lot. I kept that thing into the late seventies, which was a lot longer than I kept him!
Husband worked off and on in telephone sales and as a bartender in various places, and I had a few kit-and-caboodle acting jobs. In mid-October I was offered two plays in Moorestown, both to be directed by Arthur Allen Seidleman: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, playing Sister Woman, and Romeo and Juliet, playing the Nurse.
“Are there any roles open for my husband?” I asked, and they agreed to cast him as Brother Man in Cat, so Mother came up to stay with Mark while we went off to New Jersey for three weeks.
“I hate this role,” groused The Italian. “I hate Seidleman.”
Good grannies! He hated life in general, I guess. I stayed on for Romeo and Juliet, but The Italian went back to New York. Mother returned to Ardmore and Husband laid down the law, “I refuse to be a baby-sitter.” So I took a small apartment near the Moorestown school and enrolled Mark in their second grade. They were teaching arithmetic by a new method that totally confused Mark—as did everything else about the new school, which was drastically different from the New York school he’d just been getting used to.
I was equally befuddled by the Nurse role. Arthur Allen Seidleman had cut that juicy part to shreds, eliminating most of the Nurse’s lines.
“We need to throw the attention onto Romeo,” he said. “This actor has been called the Romeo of the decade.”
I had to stifle a laugh. The Romeo of the decade? He wasn’t the Romeo of the week. This turkey was not a top-notch rendition of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. To make matters worse, poor Mark got the mumps. I didn’t want to leave him but had to ask our landlady to watch him while I performed. One night after I got home, he was still awake, having feverish hallucinations of toy soldiers marching over the bottom of the quilt toward him.
“Here they come, Mother! Look! There they are!”
“It’s the fever, honey. It’s just your imagination,” I tried to explain, but it took a good half hour to calm him down enough to get to sleep. Poor little guy.
The summer of 1966, both Husband and I had jobs at the Hampton Playhouse. Mother came up and roomed with Mark at Maddie’s house. Husband was not pleased. He was also not pleased with the roles he was given to play. In fact, he wasn’t pleased with much of anything.
I, however, was delighted with my terrific roles that summer. I played Maggie, the tortured Marilyn Monroe character in After the Fall, and the wild cat dancer in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The costume department was swamped, so I sewed my own little leopard-print ears, bra, and bikini bottom with a curled tail. I also did a specialty ballroom duo with the show’s choreographer for The Sound of Music, in which I played the vain and silly Baroness. In the final flourish of the dance, my partner lifted me overhead at center stage under a huge chandelier. One night, as we exited, the chandelier fell, smashing into a jillion pieces. Shaken, I looked at the mess onstage, thinking, I was under that five seconds ago!
I wasn’t that lucky with The Italian. One late-summer night in our bedroom, I objected to something he said, and he slapped me hard across the face and warned, “You are never to display disagreement or anger toward me again. Or you can expect much worse than a slap.”
Playing the Baroness in The Sound of Music, just before the chandelier fell.
Shocked to my roots, I stood trembling, not a doubt in m
y mind that he meant it.
The season ended, and we loaded the car to go home to New York. Mother had given Mark a kitten a few weeks before, but Husband snapped, “We’re not taking that thing with us.”
Mark looked up at me, blinking back tears, breaking my heart. Mother was silently furious. But I was afraid to argue. We drove back to Manhattan in silence. Without the kitten.
One should always take note of how a prospective husband’s father treats his wife, but alas, I was married to The Italian before I caught his father’s act, the sadistic, humiliating way he treated his darling wife, Olga. It explained a lot—a little too late. During one of his many attempts to whip me into shape, The Italian brayed at me, “It’s the wife’s duty to wait on her husband, keep his house clean, and bring him his pipe and slippers!”
Staring at this dinosaur, I asked, “And what, pray, is the husband’s duty?”
Stumped, he stomped off, but after a few seconds returned triumphantly and said, “To mop the kitchen and take out the pail!”
In his father’s house, that was the husband’s job. No man in my family or, indeed, my acquaintance back home would be caught dead mopping the kitchen. But all his life, The Italian had watched his dad do it, so he did it, docile as a lamb. Family tradition.
More effective than hypnosis.
In September 1966, Mark entered third grade at his Eighty-second Street school, happy to see his good buddy Phillip again. I was gainfully employed as a lady of questionable repute in the musical Take Me Along, starring Tommy Sands and Tom Bosley, at a theatre within commuting distance of home. My agent submitted my picture and résumé to the producers of MacBird!, a new play to be done at The Village Gate. This was heavy stuff, a political satire speculating about LBJ orchestrating the Kennedy assassination, just as Macbeth murdered King Duncan with Lady Macbeth hectoring him to do it. My photo was submitted for Lady MacBird, a send-up of Lady Bird Johnson, but she was a brunette, so the producers didn’t want to see me.
My First Five Husbands Page 13