by Alan Shapiro
“I want Curly to order it for me.”
“Jesus!” Irene said.
“Calm down, honey,” Curly said. “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.”
“Since when did you become so hoity-toity,” Charlie said. “You’d think your father was a Rockefeller and not a butcher.”
“Don’t start with me about my father. You leave my father out of this.”
She got up and ran crying to the bathroom. Irene followed after to see what she could do. Curly ordered her a drink, a Bloody Mary—it was waiting for her when she returned.
“Sweetheart,” he said as he stood and put his arm around her, her eyes still red from crying. “I’m sorry, I should’ve remembered. Here’s your drink.”
When she saw the Bloody Mary, she laughed. “Well, I guess I deserve it. Just a bad day at the office. Thank God it’s over now.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Curly said.
“Bloody Mary,” she said, laughing again. “You’re such a kidder.” She ruffled his hair and pulled out a cigarette. By the time it reached her lips he was already holding the match flame up to it.
THAT NIGHT, SHE pasted a postcard picture of the Balinese Room in the scrapbook. She wrote, “Spent the evening with my family; Curly and I danced all night. Food not so good.” He wrote, “Miriam had a fracas with family.”
CURLY SIGNED THEM up to perform in the Camp Lee couples talent show. Miriam flew down to Virginia for the performance. It was almost like being in show business. One minute she was home in Boston in the middle of winter, and the next she was in Virginia, on stage in high heels, fishnet tights, and a barmaid getup with a short black skirt. Behind her stood Curly and two other men dressed to the nines, replete with top hat and cane. And as she sang “Embraceable You,” the men behind her twirled their canes in unison as if they were rifles. Her voice sounded low and sultry. Her lips fondled and clung to every note, as if reluctant to let it go, to let it disappear into the next note and the next. Left to right, she stepped across the stage, singing, “Just one look at you . . .” while, right to left, the ham-handed Maurice Chevaliers marched behind her, canes tipping the top hats down over their eyes. Then Curly broke out of line and took her in his arms, his beautiful wife-to-be, and sang, “Come to papa,” and as he dipped her down and smoothly drew her up, they sang together, My sweet embraceable you. The soldiers in the audience went wild.
FINALLY THEY MARRIED and she moved to Charleston where he was stationed. Just shy of nineteen, and here she was in the Deep South, far from everything she knew, in a small apartment on the base. This would be the first meal she would cook for him. Her neighbor, Gloria, a friendly big-boned redhead with enormous breasts, had given her a recipe that she called “Southern Spaghetti.” Miriam spent all afternoon getting ready—cleaning, buying groceries, preparing the sauce. She borrowed from Gloria a checkered tablecloth and two tall candleholders. And though she and Curly didn’t drink much, she bought a bottle of expensive red wine to mark the occasion. When he got home, the room resembled a Parisian bistro on the left bank of the Seine.
Here they were at last, facing each other across the wobbly metal table, in flickering candlelight. She held up her wine- glass, watching him intently as he lifted the first forkful of the first home-cooked dinner of their married life.
He tasted. “What kind of shit is this,” he blurted out. The glass flew from her hand, and he ducked. What the . . . ?! They looked at each other. For a moment, they had no idea who it was they saw.
MARRIED HOUSING UNITS were more like bunkers than apartments—theirs was a studio, with a fold-out couch, a floor lamp, one table to dine on with two chairs, and a galley kitchen with a staticky Philco radio on the counter and a porthole window above the kitchen sink. It was so small there was nowhere not to be in someone’s way. And the walls were thin, and every night, in the next apartment, every single night, Gloria and her husband, Tommy, went at it longer and louder than Miriam thought was possible. She felt judged by every shriek and groan, by the bed board banging on and on against the wall, on the other side of which Miriam and Curly lay unable to sleep after doing or not doing whatever it was they did or didn’t do.
MIRIAM COULDN’T DENY it anymore: she loved best the appearance she and Curly made together. He was so good-looking, especially in uniform, that she felt more beautiful beside him. She loved the outward show of married life, the handsome and adoring newlyweds with their future all before them. He was a good man, too, a family man. She loved all that about him. Sex was the least of it; sex had nothing to do with devotion or beauty or being seen. Sex was the opposite of being looked at as they made an entrance. It was like dancing in the dark when no one’s watching, performing a play to an empty theater. Sex confused and scared her. Why? She couldn’t say, and if she could, who would she have said it to? It was just that there was something he expected from her, something she was supposed to know—he wouldn’t tell her what it was, and she wouldn’t ask, even though she hated not knowing it, and hated the advantage she imagined he must have felt knowing and not telling her what it was she was supposed to do and when and how often she was supposed to do it. That he never complained only made it worse, because she sensed his disappointment, his resentment, sensed it in the dutiful way he held her for a moment afterward before he turned away, and they would lie there back-to-back, listening to the inexhaustible couple on the other side of the wall. At least Curly got what he wanted, even if it wasn’t perfect. He got some relief, and if truth be told maybe she did, too, since for a night or two afterward he wouldn’t pester her. But then she’d feel the pressure building up again and then, just when all she wanted was to go to sleep herself, he’d touch her in that way, and if she didn’t reciprocate he’d get moody and sullen. She knew what he was thinking: she’s like a little girl, a child; she’s not a woman (like the one next door), not a real woman. Angrily, she’d give him what he wanted. She’d do it. She’d get it over with. Fast and furious.
HE SHIPPED OUT to the Philippines onboard the USS Dakota. The war ended just as he reached the Pacific theater. He saw dead bodies everywhere but no action. Onboard the warship, soldiers and nurses were hopping in the sack day and night, right under the noses of their commanding officers who pretended not to know. In his letters, Curly referred to the nurses as “tomatoes” (“a real tomato”) and to the most beautiful of them as “tomato puree.” He’d describe their faces and their figures, not, he said, to make her jealous, but only so she’d see how much he loved her—that, even as tempted as he was, and lonely, he’d be true to her because he loved her so much, and anyway, next to her, these gals were “just a bunch of old potato pickers.” They couldn’t hold a candle to his wife.
He also wrote about the suffering everywhere, the devastation. After what he’d witnessed of the war, he said he’d never complain of anything again. Like Lou Gehrig, he wrote, he was the luckiest man on the face of this earth.
Writing to Curly, and reading his letters, Miriam felt the fog of confused feeling lift again and she grew hopeful about the life ahead, the children they would have—they’d be wonderful parents. Wasn’t that what sex was for? Wasn’t that why they had married in the first place? Yes, she missed him; the world was a dangerous and terrible place, but they would be each other’s safe haven. They would be each other’s shelter from the storm. All she wanted to do was hold him. All she wanted to do was make him happy. She pledged to dedicate her life to that.
ACT II
Scene I
Just after the war, they’re posing for a photograph at a cousin’s wedding. It’s a photograph of Curly’s family. His brother and sister-in-law and two of his older sisters and their husbands sit at a table while Miriam and Curly and his younger sister and her husband stand behind them. The table is round, and there’s a white carnation in the middle of it, surrounded by empty plates, drinks, water glasses, and the crumpled napkins of those who have had to stand for the picture.
The youngest sister’s husband is an in
veterate womanizer. Only a week or so before this wedding, he was away on business, and his wife called his hotel room at one a.m. and a woman answered. Not long after this picture’s taken, sometime in the next few months, she’ll file for divorce. This is, in fact, the last family occasion he attends, the last picture he appears in.
Curly’s oldest sister has two daughters, both of them mildly retarded.
The brother-in-law sitting at the table is looking to his left at his beautiful wife, who’s looking out at the photographer. He adores his wife, but he drinks too much. And she’s just about had it. A few years earlier, after some vague business venture went belly-up, he became a hairdresser, a profession associated with homosexuals, with “faygelas.” That he is good at cutting hair only increases his sense of having lost his manhood, having failed his family. A faygela with a family he can’t support—what could be worse? His wife has threatened to leave him if he doesn’t quit the boozing. He doesn’t, but before she has the chance to leave him, he drops dead of a heart attack. This, too, is his last picture with the family.
Curly still works for his father and brother in the slaughterhouse, working for peanuts, bubkes, and it drives Miriam crazy how he places loyalty to them over loyalty to her and the family they’re trying to have, a loyalty, she’s quick to add, his brother and father don’t return. The old man is practically retired while the older brother spends most of his time in Florida with his wealthy friends, playing golf, relaxing while Curly works like a dog, running the slaughterhouse day in, day out, seven days a week. And yet he doesn’t earn enough to buy a pair of slippers, much less, God forbid, a trip somewhere. What about her plans, or his? What happened to Easy Street?
None of this, of course, is evident as they pose for the camera. Everyone is smiling out at the photographer. The men sport tuxedos; the women, evening gowns. Miriam’s hair is marcelled in a thick wave that gathers without breaking down the right side of her face. The other women all have perms. Everyone looks the way they’ve always dreamed of looking. Somewhere in the ballroom a band is playing “ ’S Wonderful” while the happy newlywed couple dances the first dance. But this family, these people, stand here not so much to celebrate the cousin who’s getting married but their enduring faith in the glamorous trappings of success. In the moment of the picture, they are what they pretend to be. And no one more so than Miriam, who smiles the widest, her mouth opening as if to suck in all the happiness around her.
Scene II
The first child was a girl with brown hair and gray eyes. Miriam couldn’t bring herself to settle on a name. It wasn’t because she wanted a unique name, a name unlike anybody else’s, a name as special as she knew the child would be. She couldn’t name the baby because she didn’t think the baby would live. Despite the doctor’s assurances that she was perfectly healthy, she couldn’t believe something that small and helpless could survive. Why name a child that wouldn’t live? A named baby would be a grief magnet; nameless, there’d be less to mourn. Or maybe it was easier to mourn preemptively, to mourn in advance, a nameless baby, so when the loss came she’d be ready for it. The grief would already be behind her. Even after she brought the girl home, she would not name her. She would not name her because the baby slept so much. She slept through the night. She slept most of the day. What a good baby, her friends said, so little bother. But it worried her how much the baby slept. The doctor said, “Enjoy, get some rest; you’re lucky she isn’t fussy.”
But she couldn’t rest; she kept going to the girl’s crib to make sure she was breathing. The quiet at night was always too quiet; the quiet kept her listening. Then one night the baby cried. Relieved, Miriam rushed to the crib. But when the baby wouldn’t take the bottle, and wasn’t wet, and wouldn’t calm down, Miriam grew alarmed again. She walked the baby from room to room, patting it on the back, shushing it, sometimes singing “People Will Say We’re in Love” from Oklahoma or “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel. She tried one shoulder then the other. She sat with the baby in her lap, against her breast; she lay down with the baby on the couch in the living room. But nothing worked. It was one a.m. and the baby was crying; the baby was crying at two a.m., at three, at four, when Curly got up and dressed. As he left, he kissed Miriam on the cheek and said that if the crying continued she should maybe call the doctor. Big help he is. Now it was just her and the wailing baby in the new apartment they moved to when they found out she was pregnant. One moment she was scared that something was really wrong; the next moment she was frustrated, then angry, then thinking she should slam the baby’s head against the wall and at least then she’d know why she was crying.
It wasn’t till nine a.m. that the baby went back to sleep. Julie, Miriam told herself, as she lay down at last, we’ll call her Julie.
RIGHT FROM THE start, Julie was a quiet child and (Miriam had to admit it) a little standoffish. And three years later, when Ethan, the moody redhead, came along, with his tantrums and his attention-grabbing ways (weren’t his first words “me” and “mine”?), Julie grew even more withdrawn and cooler. Oh, she had friends, lots of friends, and the little girl she turned into when her friends were over—affectionate, talkative, eager to please—bore no resemblance to the girl she was at home with just the family. Aloof, not contrary, Julie would shrug and mumble, “I guess,” whenever Miriam would ask her if she wanted to play a board game or cook together. But it was never fun because the girl just sleepwalked through the play. It was as if she agreed to almost anything Miriam proposed so as not to disappoint her mother. And yet the more Miriam tried to keep her interested, the more distant the girl became. Sometimes she found herself begging Julie to get more involved, to pay attention. “Come on Julie,” she’d say, “play with me, like this, come on, it’s fun.” But Julie would just look at her as if Miriam were the child, the needy one, begging for attention, and Julie the too-busy mother.
So Miriam backed off. She learned to admire Julie’s self-possession, her focus. She came to appreciate, if not entirely enjoy, seeing Julie, often for hours at a time, on the floor of her room with all her books spread out before her, so engrossed in reading, happily in a world of her own. That self-sufficiency, though, drove her little brother crazy. Ethan always wanted Julie to play with him, or at least watch him play with his truck or his toy soldiers, and when she wouldn’t so much as look up from the book, he’d pinch or poke her, and when that didn’t work he’d hurl himself into her lap, getting between her and the book, and say, like Thumper in Bambi, “Whatcha doin’?” She’d finally cry out, “Leave me alone,” and run to her room and slam the door. After a while, he stopped asking her to play and went straight for the poking and pinching, just to annoy her.
“Honey, you’re gonna ruin your eyes, the way you read so much,” Miriam would say, or “Play with your brother for a change,” but Julie just ignored her and kept reading. It scared Miriam how much Julie read, though she bragged to her friends and family all the time about what a reader her daughter was, a brilliant girl, a real professor.
But then with Sam, “the baby,” Julie, six years old now, was completely different. Julie couldn’t leave Sam alone. Miriam would find her sometimes in the middle of the night at Sam’s crib, fussing with his little blanket, or just looking at him. She wanted to hold him, be the one to give him the bottle, or change his diaper, or just play with him for hours on the floor. Sometimes, in the morning, or at bedtime, while Miriam sat with Sam in the big rocking chair beside his crib, Julie would get into her lap, and then Ethan, who couldn’t bear to miss out on anything, would climb up, too, and with Julie holding the bottle for Sam, and Ethan sucking his thumb, the four of them would rock together while Miriam sang “Lullaby of Broadway.” At such times, half-asleep, Miriam would think, “Someone should take a picture of this, what a picture we’d make,” and then falling asleep as she rocked her little ones happily she wouldn’t think of anything at all.
Scene III
In 1956, with help from Curly’s father, they bou
ght a small two-story Victorian on a cul-de-sac in Allston. They put down thick shag carpets throughout the two floors of their new home and new black-and-white checkered linoleum in the kitchen and bathrooms. Miriam chose an Oriental motif for the furnishings and fixtures—orange paper lanterns instead of lamps, wallpaper showing Chinese farmers in rice paddies, or shirtless and barefooted rickshaw drivers pulling rickshaws behind them, their faces invisible under the broad-brimmed hats they wore. In the living room, she hung lithographs of Parisian scenes—couples walking arm in arm down narrow cobbled streets, across the Place de la Concorde, along the Champs-Élysée. She lined the mantel over the fireplace they never used with figurines of peasant men and women—one swinging a scythe, one sowing seeds, one driving a team of plow horses. Over the twin beds in the master bedroom, she put up big bright posters from her favorite musicals: South Pacific, Oklahoma, Annie Get Your Gun. Over her dressing table, she hung a photograph from Show Boat, one showing Miss Julie holding her arms out imploringly toward the audience—Miriam imagined Julie was singing “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” The bedroom didn’t get much light, and the posters brightened it, and made it seem larger than it was. In the bathroom, for old time’s sake, she hung a framed poster of Fanny Brice at the Follies. In the foyer, beside the coatrack, she hung a painting of London’s Tower Bridge, partially obscured by fog. She loved the international flavor of the unpredictable decorations. Inside the house, you’d never guess you were in Allston.
MIRIAM HIRED A sixty-year-old black maid named Melba Bradford to clean for them twice a month. Melba had a round body and thin legs; her graying frizzy hair was pulled straight back into a tight bun. She had a large mole on her right cheek that Miriam had to work hard not to look at. All Miriam knew about her was that she lived in Mattapan not far from where Miriam herself grew up. She arrived at eight on Fridays, and left at five. She never wanted to be fed. She never spoke. She worked nonstop with a blank expression on her face, took her money without a word of thanks, and left. And while Miriam felt uncomfortable around her—there was something Miriam found menacing about her silence, something judgmental or put-upon, although she couldn’t quite say how or why she felt that way—she nonetheless adored how nice the house looked after Melba cleaned it. She loved the bracing tang of cleanser in the air, the shiny figurines and vases, the glistening Formica, the polished breakfront, and the streaks left in the carpet by the vacuum cleaner. Every other Friday evening, Miriam felt as if the house was once again brand-new, never lived in, poised for the life that she was meant to live. She recommended Melba, whom she referred to as her “girl,” to all her friends and family. She couldn’t say enough good things about her girl—her girl, who was reliable and clean and never shilly-shallied.