by Betsy Lerner
Bette also comes to all of my daughter’s plays. She comes in part because of her friendship with my mother, but her fidelity to these fledgling productions isn’t a chore; she loves watching ninth graders attempting The Tempest, or hoofing their way through Thoroughly Modern Millie. Bette had been the star of the drama club at Hillhouse High. When the cast list was put up, she was confident that she would land the lead in all the school plays, and she always did. “I thought I was the greatest thing going!”
Bette isn’t at all reticent to talk with me, says she’s been looking forward to it, clears her throat and leans in.
“So when did you win your first Oscar? When did it all begin?”
Bette laughs, settles back into her chair, but she doesn’t need to search her memory. She might as well be telling me about something that happened that morning.
“Well, actually, it started in the second grade. I was playing the part of Mrs. Upper Lip, and I opened my mouth and out came this wonderful voice, and I remember looking around and having everyone pay attention to me. I decided then that drama was going to be the thing that I would do with my whole life.”
Bette has a deep sonorous voice and perfect articulation. When she speaks it’s as if she is reading a short story aloud, speaking in full sentences with well-placed pauses. No ums, no ahs. All of this dates back to a Chapel Street studio in downtown New Haven where Bette first took elocution lessons.
Enter Julia Jacobs. Masculine like Joan Crawford and angular like Katharine Hepburn, she was the embodiment of the young actress’s dream. “I loved her. As a matter of fact, I would imitate her when I got home. The way she pronounced certain words, I would pronounce certain words. I just worshipped her. And I was her star.”
Elocution lessons were popular in the 1930s and 1940s for people who needed professional coaching and for new immigrants hoping to shed their accents. Most of the kids in Bette’s class were there to work on “self-presentation,” which basically meant manners, but not Bette Cohen. She was there to hone her craft. Her dream solidified when she saw the movie and performance that would change the course of her life: Bette Davis in Dark Victory. From that day on she changed the spelling of her name from Betty to Bette in homage to the great actress.
“You were just a kid. How did your parents let you do that?”
“I just did.”
Bette’s father had no use for his daughter’s fancy lessons. When she was old enough to drive, he refused to let her take a car from the lot. A tight-fisted used-car salesman, his constant refrain was: If you crack up the car we’ll go broke. Bette didn’t care; she even enjoyed the two-mile walk to the studio, rehearsing the monologues in her head, preparing to recite them for Julia, or incorporating her feedback on the walk home. When Bette’s father threatened to renege on the dollar for lessons, Julia cut the price in half.
“I still think about her to this day, sometimes I even feel myself leaning in the way she would, the angle of her body.”
Bette admits that she befriended Ginger Bailey because her grandfather owned the storied Shubert Theater. All the Broadway-bound shows previewed there, including Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, The King and I, and Carousel.
“I felt so guilty at the time, but Shubert’s had all the opening shows. Everything started here. Oh, I used to just drool over it.” An actress has to do what an actress has to do. It isn’t hard to imagine Bette playing the part of Ginger’s new best friend, sharing the family box with its gold-leaf garlands and plush red seats, waiting for the curtain to rise while off-kilter notes filled the air from the orchestra pit below. “They were always the best two hours of my life.”
When it came time to go to college, most kids from the 1949 graduating class of Hillhouse High were on their way to the University of Connecticut. Not good enough for Bette. She convinced her mother that Skidmore was the place where her youthful goals would be realized, and Sylvia Cohen made it so. She had lost a six-year-old daughter, and when Bette was born a year later, she arrived as a miracle. Her mother called Bette her charm and maneuvered around her husband to find the money to send her. She would do anything for her bright, beautiful, and talented girl. And Bette rewarded her throughout high school with one successful show after another, and to cap it all off, delivering the senior class speech. Bette was poised to step onto that college stage and shine.
Freshman year, the theater department staged Our Hearts Are Young and Gay, the very play Bette had just starred in during her senior year. She thought she had the lead sewn up.
“Oh my god, that’s an easy one for me.” But she got the second lead. She had no idea then that it would be the best part she would get during the next four years, when she was uniformly cast in one insignificant role after another. And with each defeat came eroded confidence. Every rejection was followed by days of dejection.
Her first year of college had brought with it the single, debilitating fact that would inform the rest of her life. All of the girls at Skidmore who had been the stars of their high school were now competing for the lead parts in the plays. “I was no longer the star, and I also was no longer getting straight A’s because the competition on the curve put me further down.” Bette lowers her head, closes her eyes, and takes a beat, only she isn’t acting. It was the awakening that would come to define all of life’s disappointments, only this one the first and most crushing. Bette looks up, shrugs. “There were a thousand Bette Cohens.”
Of course I know that Bette didn’t go on to become an actress; instead she became a wife and mother and, as I always knew her, a Bridge Lady. Only sitting with her now, in her spotless living room, I feel her disappointment as if it happened days instead of years ago.
“The whole thing was such an awakening to me that I shiver when I think about it. I would try out for parts and not get them. And it broke my heart.
“My poor roommate,” Bette says. “I was so glum, trying to get it into my head that I wasn’t going to be an actress.”
The Importance of Being Earnest was the final play of her college career. During tryouts, the all-too-familiar feeling of dread crept in. Once again, anxiety conquered confidence, and Bette left the audition utterly devastated. Driven by despair, the clock on her college career ticking down, she did something she didn’t know was in her: she went back to the director and pleaded for the part. “It was a huge risk. The audience would be full of parents. I was an unknown quantity for a lead as pivotal as Lady Bracknell.”
“You begged her?”
Bette knew the director couldn’t take the risk, but desperate not to see this last chance fall away like all the other roles she’d lost during her four years, she went back and begged, and astonishingly the director relented. Bette would play the part, reprising the high falsetto of her second-grade performance as Mrs. Upper Lip. The performance was a smashing success. The director found Bette after the show and apologized for having never cast her in any significant parts. She had no idea how good she was.
“How did it feel?”
Bette falls silent.
They were crumbs for a girl with a heart already broken.
It’s early April, and Connecticut is still refusing to warm. It’s the first Monday of the month and Bridge is at Bette’s. She wears perfectly fitting slacks and a sweater that doesn’t match so much as goes with it. Matching is for amateurs. The way Bette puts clothes together is intrinsically correct; it’s the mark of a woman confident in her looks and taste, and this poise extends throughout her home. It’s as if all the energy she had once put into performance has been channeled into the presentation of self and home. Like all of the ladies, she took the road more traveled; her decision alone seems tinged with regret.
As the ladies filter in, Jackie remarks on the repaired skylights, which instantly triggers irritation in Bette. A tree had crashed through their den during a recent storm, and Bette is not happy about the repairs. Apparently the trim on the old skylights was flush with the ceiling but not so with the replacem
ents. Bette points this out to the girls, disgusted. The ladies can’t tell the difference, but Bette insists that it’s not right. Arthur stops in for a minute to say hello and overhears Bette complain about the moldings. He throws up his hands. There is nothing wrong with them! Arthur is about as good-natured as they come, but everyone has a breaking point. You know that if he hears one more word about the moldings, no, if he so much as sees Bette glance skyward and register disdain, he might blow. But for now, he just leaves. No scene.
Bette and Arthur have been together for nearly sixty years. I know the trim on the skylights is not about to topple a marriage of this duration. These marriages are built to last, like the appliances from their era, made of cast iron and steel. Put another way: divorce was not an option. At different times, the ladies have asserted that marriage “forces” couples to stay together, and that this is a good thing. “You’re forced to work out your problems, to stick to it,” Bette says. Rhoda agrees; people divorce too quickly. I don’t know that I agree or disagree, but like a high school debater assigned the affirmative position, I’d feel the need to defend divorce and choice in general. I’d argue that the deeper commitment is staying together when you’re free to go.
This is my first lunch at Bette’s, and I feel a little faint or nauseated. Her dining room has that darkly quiet, unused look, the table only set for holidays and special occasions. Does anyone ever open a window around here? Everything that might be needed is anticipated and already on the table: a pitcher of water, a tidy dish for Sweet’n Low packets and another for a selection of teas, condiments, and serving pieces for every dish. Bette has delicate bone-white dessert plates with round depressions for the matching teacups to nestle in. They put me in mind of a dollhouse tea party. Leaf-shaped dishes, smaller than actual leaves, are set out for the used tea bags, later to be choked to death by their own strings. A kettle quietly chugs along on the stove. Of the ladies who still prepare lunch, Bette, Rhoda, and my mother, none has relaxed their standards. This is most evident in the parade of napkin rings I’ve come to witness gracing their tables: silver, porcelain, tortoiseshell, bamboo, and Bakelite. I marvel at the care taken. Bette’s table could be on display at the Smithsonian: MID-CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN DINING ROOM, CIRCA 1958.
The ladies tell me they are likely the last bridge club in the area that serves lunch, the last bastion of civilization. And it might be. Everyone is punctual, everyone is dressed, and no one checks her phone throughout the meal or, god forbid, during Bridge. Most of them never use their phones (flip phones), and I don’t think any of them know how to pick up voice mail either. All of the Bridge Ladies have computers, only they are a greater source of consternation than information (except for Bea, who loves to google, send e-mails, and play Bridge on it). Bette and Arthur’s computer is at least a decade old, but they don’t see the point in getting a new one. “One minute it’s working, the next not,” Bette says, frustrated, as if it were a toaster you could smack to get going again. (Of course, my teenage daughter mocks me for not knowing how to write on someone’s wall or for using hashtags incorrectly.)
Every generation has a technology threshold. The ladies have missed out on a lot of developments, only they believe they are better off. They abhor the sight of people bowed over their phones. Rhoda saw an attractive couple over the weekend at a very nice restaurant. She claims they were on their phones the entire time, not a word exchanged between them.
“Why don’t they just stay home?” Rhoda asks the women, her voice laced with a mix of disgust and indignation.
Everyone agrees. The ladies can’t stand iPhones. They see progress as negative. I have a low tolerance for conversations that glorify the past. At no point in history have people had more freedom and access to information. The world is still a violent and dangerous place, but it’s not the Middle Ages when a third of the population was killed, or World War II (a so-called good war, their war) when more than sixty million people were killed. Was childhood ever innocent? Not too long ago children were born to work the fields and clean the chimneys. All these thoughts race through my mind when the ladies decry iPhones and the Internet and the horrible manners of people today. I want to blow a thick stream of pot smoke into the face of anyone that thinks the days of wine and roses were preferable to today. But I stay silent. This isn’t my lunch and these aren’t my battles. For the ladies, the last innovation they embraced, as far as I can tell, is the Cuisinart, introduced in the 1970s, virtually cutting in half the time it takes to make latkes, which isn’t nothing.
Bea’s been to the movies. She goes with the same friends most weekends and refers to them as the “flicks.” She’s outspoken about liking or disliking a flick, though she doesn’t get into it. She’ll tell you to see it for yourself. Rhoda loved 42, the Jackie Robinson story. It was about her era and it was a good old-fashioned story where justice prevailed. My mother found it too sentimental, and they “agree to disagree.”
“That’s what makes horse racing,” my mother says, a slightly more polite version of “there’s no accounting for taste.”
Jackie’s husband doesn’t like going to the movies, but they’ve happily discovered On Demand. She mentions that they watched Les Miz in bed. I imagine them propped up in their bed of sixty years, Fantine’s melody washing over them. I’ve always felt that shy of unbridled passion, having someone to watch The Wire with is about as good as it gets.
Over the weekend my husband and I ran into Bette and Arthur coming out of the movies. We had all seen Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. Bette was electrified by Cate Blanchett’s performance. Jasmine was the role of a lifetime. Another couple hovered nearby. They looked tiny and infirm, the man pulling an oxygen tank behind him. As they came closer, I realized they were with Bette and Arthur. Of course I know that Bette and Arthur go out with couples all the time, but I felt a sudden pang for my mother, who often joins them for a movie. They insist she’s not a third wheel, though she can never shake that feeling. Seeing the two couples made it tangible to me that my mother’s life in the coupled lane was over. She always said of my dad that he was a great date, and a big part of losing him has been ending that era of their social life and adjusting to going solo. John and I don’t mind going to the movies alone. We’ve taken separate vacations when our schedules didn’t mesh. My mother wouldn’t have dreamed of going it alone, or breaking ranks if she didn’t like my father’s choices. She thinks all of this independence is bad, her judgment unveiled when she says things like “if that’s how you want to live.” For her generation, all of these activities required a companion.
When my father first died, there was a swarm of widows for my mother to fall in with, but she hoped to find a man friend. She went on a date or two, but nothing ever panned out. My mother, all the women, are highly aware that the male-to-female ratio in their age range wildly favors the men; women generally live longer than men by five years or more. So that when a man becomes a widower, he’s usually snapped up pretty quickly. After a successful businessman in town lost his wife to cancer, the women speculated how long it would take before he was remarried. Bette: a year. Roz: six months. Bea: a New York minute.
In fact, if a man isn’t snapped up right away, my mother suspects something “pretty bad” must be wrong with him.
“Like what?” I once asked her.
“Like anything.”
“No really, like what?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was weary and wanting me to stop this line of questions.
“Come on, like what, you must mean something.”
“Who the hell knows,” she said, exasperated with me. It was a familiar exchange. When I was little I’d ruthlessly question my mother, hounding her for answers, as if she were in the witness box and I could get her to crack by hammering her nonstop. Why were we having a late dinner? Why did I have to go to Hebrew School? Why did my older sister get to watch the entire Oscars? Why! Why! Why! My mother’s answers were weak and unsatisfying: just because, because
I said so, everything doesn’t have to have an answer. And the one that infuriated me most of all: Who said life was fair? I was a child and as such still believed in justice, even if it only meant my sister and I getting the same size portion of ziti. Not so for my mother. She had known for a long time that the world wasn’t fair. She had to live in it whether she wanted to or not.
When it’s time to play cards we move into Bette’s bright kitchen. The table is next to sliding glass windows, beyond which a weeping cherry’s long tentacles stir in the wind. Outside, there’s a picnic table with an umbrella cinched at the hips. The deck is bleached from years of sun. I can easily imagine Bette bringing a tray of hamburgers out to her husband to grill, her legs strong and tanned beneath a tennis skirt or crisp culottes and her three kids playing in the yard.
A large painting dominates one wall. It’s of a woman in a flowery dress and floppy hat. Her eyes are somewhat vacant, and I can’t tell if she is bored or sad, or if I’m projecting. My mother deals. Each lady picks up her thirteen cards and arranges them by suit except for Bette who sits this one out, loading her dishwasher. You get the feeling no dish has the chance to get comfortable in her pristine sink or on the clutter-free counter.
In lieu of the women opening up, I become convinced that the way each one arranges her cards betrays an aspect of character. Bette makes a tight fan of her cards, evidence of her mania for order. Rhoda holds her cards like a prayer book. Bea quickly snaps up one card at a time more like Blackjack than Bridge. Jackie remains impassive as she organizers her cards. If she had a pair of Wayfarers, she’d be cooler than Bob Dylan. My mother makes a wide fan of her cards and loudly grouses if she doesn’t like them. Sometimes I think this is a big act on her part; but with my mother you can never tell. Her lack of poker face is her poker face. She has hidden her scars well. I imagine they all have.
I ask Bette why she didn’t pursue acting after her big success senior year and go to New York to audition.