by Alan Shapiro
And then Stuart, in an elegant white tuxedo, appeared on stage at a piano, then Ethan followed, in knickers and vest, a baseball cap turned sideways on his head, like one of the Little Rascals from the movies. He was leaning against the piano, arms folded, looking dreamily out at the audience as he sang, “Your smiles, your frowns, / Your ups, your downs, / Are second nature to me now . . .” Oh how everybody looked at her when he was finished, even Joan Kennedy when she realized who Miriam was; they congratulated her for having such a son; how proud she must be, how excited! What’s it like, they asked, to raise a budding star?
WHEN ETHAN HAD a new song to learn, he would listen to it on the stereo in the dining room, next to the kitchen, in the early evenings while Miriam made dinner. He’d stand next to the stereo with his eyes closed mouthing the words over and over until he learned them. Then with the sound turned low, so Miriam could hardly hear the music, he’d sing in his pure high, steady voice. Miriam wasn’t a bad singer, but she couldn’t sing like Ethan. Who could? And she often wondered what it felt like to possess a voice like that, to sing so beautifully, with such emotion. How lucky her child was to have such a gift.
One evening, he was practicing “Over the Rainbow.” From the darkened dining room, he sang and sang, and it seemed to Miriam, as steam rose up around her from the big pot of soup she was stirring, that he sang more powerfully than Judy Garland herself, and he was younger than she had been when she had made that recording. When he finished, tears filled her eyes.
“Honey,” she said, “That was so beautiful.”
As he turned to the stereo to set the arm back at the beginning of the song so he could sing it again, Miriam asked him if he liked that song.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I like singing it.”
“And what do you like about it?”
“I like how it makes me sound sometimes,” he said.
“And what’s that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, “just good. Like when you wish for something that you think you’re gonna get.”
“When I was a little girl,” she said, “that’s just what singing was for me. A kind of wishing.”
“And did you get what you wished for?”
“Well,” she said, stirring the big pot with one hand, waving the steam out of her eyes with the other, “sort of. At least while I was singing.”
“Like you were wishing for the song?”
“Something like that. And for the happiness I felt when I would sing.”
“Weren’t you happy, Ma,” he asked, “when you were little?”
She stirred and stirred the soup.
“Weren’t you happy, Ma,” he asked again.
“Not like you, darling,” she said. “I couldn’t sing like you. You’re lucky. Your wish comes true every time you sing. Remember that next time you cry about not wanting to go to Stuart’s.”
He placed the needle back at the beginning of the song, and he sang in that beautiful, high, clear voice of his, and as he sang, she stirred and listened.
HALF-DRESSED, THE BOYS were hurriedly slurping up the last of their cereal. There was milk all over the table and little puddles of it on the floor. As always, Curly had left for the slaughterhouse at dawn, before anyone else was up. But his saucepan with dried egg in it was still on the stove, and his unwashed plate sat on the counter beside the sink. Miriam wanted them all out of the house so she could straighten up and get to Stuart’s. He had wanted her there early so she could help him work out a new tap dance routine for Ethan. But she was running late, and there were still the boys’ beds to deal with, and the kitchen to clean, which now looked like a war zone.
A piece of toast in one hand, her book bag in the other, Julie was heading for the door, leaving behind a trail of crumbs.
“I’ll be home late, Ma,” she said. “Cheerleading practice. Might miss supper.”
“Why should this day be different from any other day,” Miriam said. “But eat something more. You can’t learn on an empty stomach.”
She heard the door slam and Julie’s “Yeah yeah yeah” as she went down the front stairs.
“Ethan,” she said, “we have Stuart tonight.”
“Aw, Ma,” he whined, “not again. I don’t want to go. I got too much to do, I got a lot on my plate.”
“A lot on your plate,” she said, “like what?”
“You know, homework, and stuff.”
“That’ll take you what, fifteen minutes, a half hour at most?”
“Okay,” he said, “so it’s a small plate. I don’t want to go.”
“You’re going.”
“Shit,” he said, throwing his napkin down and stomping out.
“Don’t use that language with me,” she yelled after him, “or I’ll tell your father.”
Now Sam was leaving. His shoelaces were untied. “Wait,” she said. She bent down to tie them.
“Don’t touch my laces,” he said. “Don’t you tie them!”
“What do you mean, don’t tie them? If you don’t want me to tie them, learn to do it yourself.”
“I don’t know how,” he said. “And I don’t like the way you do it. They always come untied at school. And I’m always tripping.”
“Get Mrs. Cunningham to tie them,” she said.
“Then the kids’ll laugh at me.”
“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “I can’t let you leave with your shoes untied.”
“Mrs. Rosenberg,” he said.
“Sigrid? Down the street? What about Sigrid?”
“She’ll tie them. She said she would.”
“When did she say she’d tie them?”
“A while ago, ’cause I told her you didn’t know how to.”
“Why were you talking to Mrs. Rosenberg?”
“ ’Cause she saw me walking home from school and said I was going to fall on my head, and that would be it, caput, I’d die, just like that, if I didn’t tie my laces, and so she tied them for me, and they didn’t come untied until I went to bed.”
So now she couldn’t tuck in his shirts and couldn’t tie his shoelaces. He’d rather have a Holocaust survivor tie his shoelaces than his own mother? Plus, the neighborhood probably thought she neglected her children, and for all she knew maybe they thought she abused them, too. Who knew what crazy ideas that woman would put in Sam’s head? And Ethan wouldn’t go to Stuart without a fuss, and Julie—Julie was never home.
And then there was Curly to look forward to at the end of the day—angry as ever, full of complaints, wanting to know where Julie was and why Miriam couldn’t control her, and why did she have to push Ethan so hard, it wasn’t right for a kid to spend so much time singing and dancing with that “faygela” Stuart. “You want him to end up working for your father, too?” she’d have to say to shut him up. “Think that will make him happy?”
Same routine—morning after morning, night in, night out. The happy family in their happy home.
SHE SPENT MORE and more time at the studio, arriving early, staying late. She’d go on days when Ethan didn’t have a lesson. Stuart had such a way with children; one group would be tap dancing while another would be singing. He wrote music; he choreographed dance numbers; he was always busy, always doing a thousand things at once. His energy and exuberance were contagious. After a while, she found herself helping him with his books and making appointments. She had even begun helping him compose and arrange.
One day, during a break, Stuart put his hand on her shoulder. The gentle pressure of it made her blush. There was trust in the pressure, and comfort, an undemanding intimacy she’d never felt before. And the pleasure she felt just then sent a jolt of fear right through her heart.
“Miriam,” he said, “you seem a little blue lately. Everything okay?’
“I’m just tired,” she said. “You know—the kids, my mother.”
“No,” he said, “I don’t know, being a confirmed bachelor and all.”
“Ignorance is bliss,” s
he said. “At least it can seem that way sometimes.”
“And Curly? You didn’t mention Curly.”
“Curly’s Curly,” she said.
“He’s quite a looker, though, that hubby of yours.”
“A real man’s man,” she said. “That’s him.”
“Well,” he said, “this is me; and I was wondering if you’d consider making our ‘relationship’ official.”
“Official?” she asked. “As in making an honest woman out of me?” She blushed again.
“Or me,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “I mean coming to work here, being my assistant, what with all the reviews and performances I’m lining up, I could use some help, someone to fill in for me when I’m away, keep the place shipshape and all that. And it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for Ethan if you learned the business.”
“I’d have to check with Curly,” she said. “But I like your proposal.”
“Okay then,” he said, “let’s tie the knot, in a manner of speaking. And Curly can give you away.”
“Throw me away is more likely,” she said. “But yes, let’s do it—so to speak.”
CURLY WASN’T CRAZY about the plan.
“We have enough trouble managing,” he told her, “without you prancing around with Stuart.”
“We could use the money.”
“We’re doing fine.”
“When was the last time we took a trip?”
“Hey, I’m too busy working to pay the bills, to put food on the table.”
“What happened to easy street? All our big plans?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Forget it.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “What I mean is, with a little extra, maybe we could go somewhere for a change. Do something. It wouldn’t kill us.”
“I’m too goddamned tired.”
“All our friends go places. They travel everywhere, they go on cruises. Harry and Gissy just got back from Israel. They said it was beautiful. They’d never seen such beauty.”
“Hey, listen, we live in the most beautiful country in the world. The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, the Rocky Mountains—you name it we got it all right here in the US of A.”
“So why don’t we go to Vegas?”
“ ’Cause I don’t like to travel.”
“Listen, Curly, I’m taking the job, okay? Whether you like it or not.”
STUART WAS ALWAYS delighted to see her; he never failed to kiss her cheek. Oh, she knew what he was, what he was saying when he’d refer to himself as “a confirmed bachelor.” Even to think the word homosexual or fag made her blush. Her whole life she’d heard the family, Curly’s as well as hers, refer to any man even a little different as a “faygela.” He doesn’t like baseball?—must be a “faygela”; plays tennis, not football?—“faygela”; loves opera?—“faygela.” Ballet?—light in the loafers. If it weren’t for Frank Sinatra, they’d think all singers, including Ethan, were “faygelas.” Faygelas were everywhere, it seemed, though she herself had never met one, so far as she knew. If Stuart was, big deal. That only deepened the bond between them. It made the intimacy safe.
One afternoon, after everybody had left the studio, they were “debriefing” in his office about the progress of the kids—whose dancing needed work, whose voice was strongest. He was reaching across his desk for some sheet music to show her when he knocked over a coffee cup.
“Fuck me,” he shouted. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Miriam looked on, too startled to say anything.
“Oh honey,” he said, “forgive the potty mouth, but my psychiatrist says if I don’t say fuck at least four times a day, I’ll get colitis.”
He laughed, and once she started laughing, neither of them could stop. Their arms around each other, they laughed till tears were streaming down their faces.
Then he took her by the hand over to the piano; he handed her the words to what he said was his favorite song, and he had her sing it, as if she really meant it, while he played the tune. It was about a chair and how, if you wanted it, you would have to buy it, she wasn’t going to give it away, since after all it had only been used once or twice and it was still nice and tight and, you see, if she couldn’t sell it, she’d keep sitting on it, she wasn’t gonna give it away. There was no better pair of legs in town, and no better back anywhere around, no no no—if she couldn’t sell it, she was gonna sit down on it, she wasn’t gonna give it away . . .
By the third refrain, they were singing together. As she repeated, “If I can’t sell it, I gonna keep sittin’ on it,” she wasn’t anybody’s wife, or anybody’s mother. She was his Mae West or Marilyn Monroe; and who was he, if not her own Rock Hudson?
THEY WERE TALKING to the new student, Paul Minatelli. Blond hair, willowy frame, angelic smile, he sat between Stuart and Miriam on the piano bench, their back to the keys. His parents were divorced. He was twenty-one but looked younger. Stuart was especially taken with him; Miriam liked him, too, or tried to—one of his eyebrows seemed permanently raised above the other, which gave him an ironic, somewhat mocking air that made Miriam uncomfortable, though she did her best to hide it. He had just moved to Boston with his mother, from Asheville, North Carolina.
Stuart said, “Paul, where’d you get such adorable looks?”
Paul said, “From my father. If you think I’m cute, you should see him.”
Stuart and Miriam leaned closer, smiling, as Stuart said, “Really!”
And Miriam said, “Oh do tell us more!”
Paul said, looking from Stuart to Miriam, “Not to disappoint you both, but he’s married now!”
Miriam and Stuart asked, at the same time, “Happily?”
MIRIAM BREEZED IN late one evening full of excitement. She’d convinced Stuart to use one of her favorites, “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” in a new review he was working up. He had also decided to let Miriam do all the choreography for the show.
At dinner, she shared the good news (she just couldn’t help herself even though everyone was tired and sulky, having to wait so long for dinner). She was going on with such enthusiasm she didn’t notice that Curly wasn’t listening. She looked up and saw the muscles twitching in his face.
She said, “I guess I ought to quit while I’m ahead.”
“And when would that be?” Curly scoffed. “What are you two, partners now? It’s always “we this” and “we that”; you’d think you were running the place.”
“I’m just telling you how my day was,” she said. “Excuse me for thinking you’d be interested.”
Curly stared at her, one finger tapping the table. “This isn’t right,” he said after a moment.
“What isn’t right?”
“This, this job, this guy you work for, if you can call him a guy; all the time Ethan’s spending practicing and performing when he ought to be doing kid things, like playing ball and hanging out. It isn’t right; it isn’t natural.” He banged his fist down on the table. And as he stalked out, he said, “Do you even know where Julie is? When was the last time we all ate together?”
Sam started to cry. Ethan laughed at Sam.
“Now what’s wrong?” she asked. “And Ethan, you can be excused. Go practice, will you?”
“My shoelaces came untied,” Sam sobbed.
No, he couldn’t walk in the dark down to Sigrid’s house; no, she wouldn’t take him. And if he wouldn’t let her tie the laces, he should just shut up and do it himself. It surprised her how annoyed she was, when just a moment before she had felt elated.
Now there were two Miriams. One was back at the studio, thumbing through the Show Boat score, recalling all her favorite scenes and songs from that long-ago musical, already working out the dance moves for the kids. That Miriam watched her son, her youngest, the baby, from a faraway stage, and it broke her heart to see how sad and all alone he was, and if she hadn’t been so far away, she would have held him in her arms. The other Miriam moved like a robotic mother, sweeping the dishes off the table and i
nto the sink, holding them under the hard, hot jet of water while she scrubbed and scrubbed until her hands were burning, before she placed each cup and plate and bowl carefully in the rack to dry. That Miriam moved around Sam who sat at the table whimpering; that Miriam swept the floor around his feet, wiped down the Formica tabletop around his arms; she wiped and buffed and polished until the kitchen light reflected on every surface of the kitchen, glaring up at what was shining down upon it.
Scene XI
Ethan sang and danced throughout New England. He was thirteen years old when he auditioned for the road company of The Sound of Music and landed the part of one of the von Trapp kids. He was a little old for the part, but the casting director was so taken with him, his stage presence, his powerful voice, that he wanted to hire him anyway. Not only that, the company was willing to pay a chaperone $250 a week to look after him for the nine-month run. “That was quite a lot of money in those days,” Miriam would say years later when she’d tell the story. Even Ethan was excited. He’d be away from home, he wouldn’t have to go to school, and he wouldn’t have his mother breathing down his neck. What was not to like? Miriam in the first dizzying moments of the spectacular news could hardly keep herself from singing “Climb Every Mountain.” She called her cousins, Irene and Charlie. Everyone said, remember us when you’re rich and famous.
Curly balked. Not so fast, he said. Ethan had no business being out of school and away from home for so long. He was just a kid. It was too soon. He wasn’t ready. Maybe if she went on the road with him, but in that case what about Sam and Julie? Okay, Julie would soon be off to college, but Sam, Sam needed his mother, too. Besides, with the hours he was working, he couldn’t do around the house what she did. They all depended on her. Maybe in a few years, but not now.