by Alex Witchel
Michael Victor called the next day and was extremely nice. He was also allergic to cigarette smoke (I was puffing away when we met), allergic to perfume (I was wearing Chanel No. 5), and after I’d ordered the rack of lamb at the Quilted Giraffe, he broke it to me that he wouldn’t be eating dinner. He was on Optifast. So while I made my way manfully through six chops, he sipped from a frosted glass through a straw.
After he didn’t kiss me good night (allergic to makeup?), I went home and stayed in bed for the rest of the weekend with hot towels and a heating pad around my neck. I couldn’t move it at all. Sharon, who had turned into the typically absent New York roommate who left me notes like I was the cleaning lady with instructions on her real whereabouts versus the version I was to tell her mother, was actually in residence and served me roast chicken and kasha varnishkas. She lent me her sympathetic ear, and together we decried the quality of men worldwide. Her Dr. Hyman was history, and she was now onto a scenic designer she knew from the drama school who had never spoken once in the three times I had met him.
“Is he a deaf-mute?” I asked, only half joking.
“He has issues with his mother,” she said tersely. End of discussion.
I could sympathize, actually. I was having issues with my own mother. She couldn’t understand why I hadn’t fallen in love with someone else yet, since that night at the Met had happened an eternal four months ago. Every minute I spent unattached was a direct insult to my ovaries.
One night on the phone when I found her to be exceptionally prickly, I finally mentioned Fred Salzman and heard her start to smoke. Fred Salzman had been Mom’s fiancé before she met Dad. He had been her boyfriend starting in eighth grade. His mother had wanted him to go to Yale Law School and become a big shot and leave my middle-class, Bronx-born mother in the dust. The fact that Fred Salzman was also middle-class and Bronx-born had escaped his mother entirely. The daughter-in-law she envisioned had grown up on Park Avenue, the kind of girl who spent her days shopping for gloves and perfecting her beef Stroganoff. That kind of girl did not train rats to roll over three times before pressing the lever in their cage and leave broccoli defrosting in a pot for dinner.
I once saw a picture of my mother taken right after she and Fred broke up. In it, Mom had a cigarette in her hand, and her eyes looked wounded and powerful all at once and she was incredibly beautiful. She probably ripped it up; I never saw it again, and whenever I asked for it she made a big fuss about how she couldn’t find it. So she knew better than she liked to let on about loving someone from childhood, dreaming about everything you might do in your life together, and watching it come apart once you grew up. And she was furious with me for reminding her.
After I invoked Fred Salzman, I noticed that she eased up on me and criticized my brother, Jerry, instead. He was now a doctoral student in microbiology at Harvard and seemed to have inherited Mom’s tendency to hang out with the rodents rather than dating marriageable women eager to have children. The older we Berlin children got, it seemed, the drier the promise of Green Hills became.
As I lay in bed one Saturday in early September—or, rather, as I lay on the futon on the living room floor—I thought, yet again, about Bucky. It had been his birthday the day before. It had also been his mother’s birthday, the very same day. Every year she would say how he had always been her best present, blah blah.
The previous year, we’d spent Bucky’s birthday at the cottage. Neither of his brothers were there, so it was just his parents and the two of us.
I’d gotten up that morning and gone down the hall to the bathroom. By the time I got back to my room, Mrs. Ross had been there and made my bed—tight, like a coffin. I brought Bucky in to see it.
“Is she trying to erase all signs of me?” I asked, and he laughed helplessly at the hospital corners and the knifed pleat under the pillow that she had managed in three minutes flat. She had already gone back outside to her folding chair, where she sat with a mound of yarn, knitting sweaters for Christmas. There was a new dog now to replace Baxter, a black Lab named Maggie—or, as Mrs. Ross liked to call her, Margaret Ann Ross. Mr. Ross didn’t seem to even notice her.
Or me. He nodded good morning, passed the sugar, and mentioned the Yankees once or twice to Bucky. Mrs. Ross, in contrast, spoke constantly, to no one in particular, as was her way, but she also directed her questions only to Bucky. They were good, these people. Lying on my futon a year later, I realized that they had decided on Beth Brewer as their candidate for the job of daughter-in-law, and they aimed that WASP technically-polite-freeze-thing right between my eyes. While you couldn’t fault a word they said, they managed to make me feel invisible.
Until dinner. In celebration of her and Bucky’s shared birthdays, Mrs. Ross had made a roast beef, instant mashed potatoes from a box, and canned peas and carrots—this in late summer, when the farms were bursting with fresh produce. I had to really choke that meal down. There was no wine, though Mr. Ross nursed his drink at the table and smoked, leaving most of the abysmal food sitting right on his plate. Mrs. Ross urged him to finish, more than a few times, until he fixed her with an icy stare and said in a deadly quiet voice, “I have.”
I felt so bad for her that I started to talk, just for distraction, about a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt I was reading, and what an inspiration she was, a real role model for the women’s movement. I went on and on and eventually realized that no one had said anything in the longest time and that the potatoes had hardened on the plates.
Bucky wouldn’t meet my eye, Mr. Ross lit another cigarette, and Mrs. Ross said, “Well, yes, dear, isn’t that interesting,” as she stood and started to clear the table.
I suddenly felt as I had that morning, when I’d seen the tightly made bed. Had I done something wrong? I stood and helped Mrs. Ross clear, and looked at Bucky again, but he stared down at the table. Finally, it was time for the cakes, two of them, and Mrs. Ross also set out a box of chocolates that a neighbor had dropped off. I had the distinct sense that I was now in the doghouse, but I couldn’t figure out what I had done other than try to make conversation to divert a scene, and no one wanted to help me, including Bucky. Slowly but surely, I was starting to get pissed.
While Mrs. Ross was busily cutting pieces from both cakes, I slid the candy box over to my place. Out of the corner of her eye, she followed my every move, as if the box were filled with gold.
“Did you ever play ‘guess inside’?” I asked innocently, my hand poised over the chocolates.
“No, dear,” she said nervously, trying to finish with the cake so she could rescue the candy. “What’s that?”
“Oh, when we were little, we used to try to guess what was inside the candy, and if we took a bite and found we guessed wrong, we didn’t have to finish it.”
Even in the twilight, I could see her face flush red. Finally, after all these years, I had found something that Mrs. Ross cared about as much as her yarn and her dogs and her cigarettes.
She sat down quickly and grabbed for the box. I almost fought her for it but Bucky kicked me under the table.
Her hand hovered.
“Guess,” I said, more loudly than I’d intended.
“Oh, well, that’s silly,” she said, “but I love my chocolate cherries, and I just know that this is one of them.” She put the piece whole into her mouth. Her face changed, and I waited for her to spit the candy out, but she lowered her eyes and swallowed instead.
“Coconut,” she said grimly. “I loathe coconut.”
“What a shame,” I said solicitously. “If you had played, you wouldn’t have had to finish it.”
“Time for presents,” Bucky boomed, bringing the gifts to the table. He opened his first—two polo shirts, whoop-de-doo—and then Mrs. Ross opened hers, exclaiming over a gold chain with a gold heart that had a tiny diamond chip in the middle. I raised my eyebrows at Bucky while his mother cleared the dessert plates, this time without my help.
“Does that mean you’re going steady?” I
asked once Mr. Ross had gone out onto the patio.
“Christ, you’re a bitch,” Bucky said glumly.
“Can I have some dinner now, please?” I asked, and after a chirped goodbye from the kitchen, we went straight to a place near the water where I polished off two lobster rolls in minutes.
“Okay, explain that scene to me,” I said finally. “What did I do wrong?”
Bucky shifted in his seat. “Nothing, really. It’s just that with my parents, when someone talks about a book they’ve read that no one else has, they consider it showing off.”
“Excuse me?”
Bucky blushed. “I know it’s not what you’re used to, but that’s the way they are. They think that if you’re going to talk about something, everyone should be able to be part of the conversation.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “What’s more, I don’t believe it’s true. In all the years I’ve known you, why would this be the first time I’ve heard about this philosophy?”
“I guess it just never seemed that pronounced before,” he continued. “And, well, there you were going on and on about Eleanor Roosevelt and women’s rights. I mean, I guess the point really is, Sandy, they don’t believe in things like women’s rights.”
“Oh, sure they do. Your mother feels she has the right to serve instant potatoes instead of real ones she has to cook herself. She’s a radical feminist.”
“And why did you have to do that to her, with the candy? You made her take one she didn’t want. It is her birthday, after all.”
“A catastrophe,” I said. “Certainly, the last thing anyone in your house wants to do is look at the inside of anything.”
An awful fight ensued.
I lay on the futon in my apartment trying to remember all of it, but couldn’t. What dominated my thoughts was: He was seeing Beth Brewer then. I did recall saying, “I don’t know when this started to be so hard,” and genuinely feeling that way, because ever since Seven Maples, something always seemed to mar our time together. And I remembered him saying, “You want everything, but only how you want it and when you want it. You want me to appear when you want me to. When you’re done with your work, when your magazine issue is closed, when your test is taken, when your mommy yells at you. That’s when you want me to appear, magically, and make everything better. But then afterward, you want me to get lost and give you your freedom until the next time.”
I heard his voice in my head and felt a flush of shame. After all these months bemoaning his betrayal, I had somehow forgotten there had been anything else. The religion issue, the parent issue, and, most important, the fairy-tale issue: my holding tight to the simpleton’s notion of him as the conquering hero, as steadfastly as he regarded me the mighty queen whose favor he needed to win. We weren’t young adults, I realized, so much as very old children. I felt my victimhood shed, like a snake’s skin.
He had kept on yelling. “Are you there for me when I’m sitting at that desk and I’m supposed to make a decision worth millions of dollars and have it be right the first time? If I call you, you tell me to work harder. You tell me that if I only applied myself, I could do anything I wanted. Well, what if I can’t? Don’t I still deserve to be taken out by you sometime and comforted? To get my own ice cream and have you say, ‘Yes, Bucky, you are right and they are wrong,’ instead of telling me how much work you have to do so you can’t see me right now and why don’t I use the time to devise a long-term strategy instead?”
Tears shone in his eyes. “Fuck a long-term strategy,” he said. “I don’t know if I even want to be doing this job next year. And you’re moving straight ahead to run that magazine, and if we ever do get married, I’ll be lucky to get you on the phone.” A fat tear rolled down his cheek. “I want a partner in life,” he said. “Do you really think you can be a partner for me?”
I closed my eyes and winced at the memory, a fat tear of my own sliding past my temple, into my hair.
Apparently not.
#31 The Mystery of the Golden Box
by Sandra Berlin
Once upon a time, there lived a baker and his wife in a small village at the foot of a great mountain. One summer’s day, the wife set out to pick some blackberries, and as she knelt among the bushes filling her bucket, she saw something shining in the dirt. She dug and dug until she unearthed a beautifully scrolled golden box that was so heavy she had trouble lifting it.
But lift it she did and, along with the berries, hauled the box home.
“Look, my husband,” she said. “Have you ever seen such a beautiful thing? I’ll bet it’s worth a fortune.”
The baker nodded. “It looks like solid gold,” he said. “But what is inside that makes it so heavy?”
He tried to pry the box open, but alas, the clasp had broken off and the box was sealed shut.
The next day, a village woman came into the bakery to buy a blackberry pie and spied a golden gleam from the back of the shop. “What is that?” she asked with interest, walking toward the box. The baker grew alarmed, thinking that someone would discover his gold and try to rob him.
“Only a trinket my wife found while picking berries at the foot of the mountain,” he said.
But when the village woman went home and tasted the pie, she exclaimed, “Why, this is the most delicious pie I have ever eaten! There are no berries at the foot of the mountain that taste this good. Whatever is inside that golden box has made this the best pie in the kingdom. I just know it.”
So off she went, back to the bakery. Along the way she told the other villagers about the pie, and a large group of them arrived at the bakery together. “Tell us your secret ingredient,” the villagers demanded. “What is inside the golden box?”
Well, business had never been so brisk for the baker, so first he sold everyone a pie, and then he smiled. “I will never tell,” said he.
The next day, the baker baked his bread, the same bread he had always baked, and when the villagers tasted it, they all exclaimed, “This is the best bread we have ever tasted. What is the secret ingredient?”
Again, the baker smiled and said, “I will never tell.”
A few more days passed, and one villager got an idea. “Why should we stand by and let the baker keep the golden box and its magic for his own?” he demanded. “We must take the box and split what is inside it equally amongst us.”
By the time the group arrived at the bakery en masse, they were mighty mad. They woke the baker and his wife from a sound sleep, shouting, “You must give us the golden box! It is not for you alone.”
“We know that,” the baker answered. “Which is why we bake the magic into the pies and breads that you buy from us.”
“Not everyone buys from you, and the magic is for everyone,” the crowd cried. Then they ran past the baker and dove for the golden box and carried it outside, where they commanded him to open it.
“But I can’t,” the baker was forced to admit. “Look and see for yourselves. The clasp has broken and the box is sealed shut.”
Well, that made the crowd even angrier. They jumped on the box, and they battered it with sticks, and when nothing else worked, they finally thrust it into the baker’s oven to melt it. And when one corner gave way, they held it aloft and everyone peered inside and a great gasp went up from the crowd.
“You tricked us!” they shouted at the baker. “It is empty!”
And they killed the baker and his wife, and melted the box all the way down so they could divide it equally amongst themselves. Then they headed back to the foot of the mountain to see if they could find any more.
But, alas, they could not. And so, over time, the villagers started to tell the story of the Golden Box and how the baker and his wife had once made the best pies and bread in the kingdom because of the secret ingredient inside.
The End
7
Susie Schein was angry. I could tell because red splotches were bursting out on her neck, but in some weird internal contract wi
th her chalky face, they never ventured above her jaw.
We were in yet another interminable story meeting where no one’s ideas were good enough. A cold December rain hit the windows; on our high floor, it seemed as if we were encased in a cloud. The conference room was filled with gloomy faces, each one of which wanted to be back in bed, but Susie was having none of it. Evan, our publisher, was alarmed by the fact that following Jolie!’s spectacular debut, sales had leveled, so he kicked Miss Belladonna, who kicked Susie, who was now kicking us. Even Jean-Louis found himself defending his covers to Evan in closed-door meetings that invariably ended with Jean-Louis slamming out of the office yelling French obscenities and taking every model he could find clubhopping in limos stocked with Cristal.
The magazine was getting stale, Evan decreed. Jean-Louis used too many of the same girls, he complained, and the other magazines all had models jumping off the page now, so we had to do something different. That meant using less of Jolie, the model who had named herself after the magazine and who was married to its top photographer. Jolie had seemed like a perfectly nice girl to me until the day I was in the art department fighting with Jean-Louis about a layout of Colleen Dewhurst, who had just played the morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night on Broadway and had given us a smart, insightful interview. But Jean-Louis took one look at her photo and snorted. “Too old,” he said disgustedly, and reduced it to one third of its size.
“But that’s Eugene O’Neill’s mother, his mère, très dramatique,” I wheedled, while I mimed shooting up with a syringe. “Elle est très important,” I insisted, but Jolie appeared then and Jean-Louis gladly forgot the shrunken picture to embrace her. Jolie had barely kissed both his cheeks in return when she spotted The Wall, filled with shots of her in an array of tiny bikinis. Her eyes widened, and she walked closer, intoxicated, to get a better look.