A Complicated Marriage

by Janice Van Horne

  Yet even in the few months since my entry into the real world, the empowerment of those college years often seemed like an aberration. Oh, I knew my confusion wasn’t really about suburbs and country clubs. It was more about wanting to opt out of the hardscrabble workaday life. I knew TV Guide wasn’t in my picture, $8 raise or not, yet I had lost any aspiration for something better. It didn’t help that in Clem’s world, surrounded by impassioned people, I felt increasingly out of my depth and passionless.

  But to hell with aspirations and girlish pictures of my future. Here was Clem, a real man, a man with his own world. The most interesting man I had ever met. He found me attractive. He focused on me, listened to me, seemed to enjoy what I said and how I saw the world. He lit up in my presence. A man I could trust, who I could give my love to and know it would be returned. Compelling stuff for the fatherless girl summarily dumped at age five. And all firsts. Our relationship had evolved as if on an assembly line: We met, we got to know each other, we got engaged, we had sex. Now I was on the cusp of moving in with him. Then the giant leap: marriage. That would solve everything. Wouldn’t it?

  But didn’t Clem challenge all the norms? I would be marrying strange. Twice my age, not much money or much of a job, and no interest in either. Yes, Clem was interesting. But why did I foresee loss? Loss of the girl who wrote rivers of poems, had even published a few in obscure magazines, and who loved her army-navy-store clothes. If I lived in Clem’s world I would always be at the bottom of a ladder I didn’t want to climb, a know-nothing in a world of know-it-alls. And so the seesaw went on.

  Then, as if on cue, the requisite deus ex machina cut through the dithering. In mid-February, Morton Street was robbed while we were at work. The take was paltry—a small stash of jewelry accumulated from my grandmother, and a few things of Debby’s. I called Clem, who told me to call the police and that he would be right over. The underwhelming event, at least by police standards, was duly recorded and that was that. Debby was staying over at Norman’s and, unwilling to spend the night alone, my move into Clem’s place began that night. After all, what was a girl to do?

  This justification that I had no choice was very important to me. I clung to it. And why not? I was painfully aware that my unmarried college friends were either living with roommates or with their parents. And here I was “shacking up” with a guy, “living in sin.” As titillating as the thought was, it didn’t make me feel good. But then, as if to make sure I leaped off the cliff, the robber returned the next day and stripped us of whatever was left, including the chocolate cake in the mini-fridge.

  A week later, feeling just fine and very grown-up about it, I moved into 90 Bank Street with my table, my typewriter—scorned by the discriminating thief—and my clothes. A few weeks later, with no ballyhoo and no regrets, I quit my job. I would be a Mrs., a jobless Mrs. Wasn’t that the way of the world?

  From the outset, Clem’s implicit acceptance of our living together surprised me. He could so easily have felt my presence as an intrusion. After all, he had never really set up housekeeping with anyone before. Even when, at twenty-five, when he had had the six-month marriage in California, they had lived in hotel rooms or with her mother. Yet here he was, taking it in stride.

  As for me, more than surprised, I was astonished. Suddenly there was a man in my bed, there was a man sharing the small space, the bathroom, bureau drawers, all the day-in-day-out intimacies of life. And it was much easier than I had dreamed. Most astonishing of all, now that I was attached to someone, I felt free. It was that freedom that, at least for the moment, allowed me to indulge in floods of feeling: pleasure, misgivings, second-guessing, the delicious drama of it all. And I was the star. No longer a hostage to confusion, I now loved wallowing in all the reasons I shouldn’t marry, while inside me, safe and snug, were all the reasons I most certainly would.

  Floating on these delicious thoughts, two weeks later, right before my twenty-second birthday, I decided to visit my father in Chicago and my brother in Denver.

  My father, David, stepmother, Marge, and their young son, Pieter—Dutch-ness will out—lived in an apartment on the Near North Side that was a testament to Marge’s passion for all things purple. I didn’t know any of them well. After the divorce, when I was five, I hadn’t seen my father again for six years. Thereafter, I would make excruciating two-week visits each summer. As withdrawn and tongue-tied as I was with him, so he was with me. On the other hand, Marge was a loud, frightening force of nature housed in a large, bosomy body that she thrust into the world like the prow of a ship. I kept my distance. Pieter was a loving oasis, so proud to have a sister. Now, after almost ten years, I had reached a comfortable middle ground with the family. Or so I thought.

  Cocktail hour, the evening ritual, begins soon after I arrive. As usual, there is the enormous platter (purple, of course), heaped with crackers laden and soggy with braunschweiger and minced ham and cheddar, and celery stuffed with cream cheese and pimentos, and bowls of sugared pecans, and jumbo green olives. Restraint is not allowed in Marge’s domain. Or in David’s, at least in his delegated domains, the carving of roasts and the mixing of drinks. I had never called him Father or Dad. They were words that would never pass my lips; my brain just wouldn’t wrap around them. Marge had often urged me to do so, saying how hurt he was that I called him David. Knowing I couldn’t, I had done second best—I called him nothing.

  He now holds sway over the large pitcher of iced gin. He deftly taps in a few drops of Noilly Prat, before he swirls the mixture briskly and fills to the brim the chilled martini glasses, each anchored with an olive. Do I on this occasion mention my preference for a twist? I like to think so, given my almost-married adult status.

  Two martinis or more later, we move to the dinner table. Surely, that night there was a roast, with my father fulfilling his other manly function. And mountains of mashed potatoes and peas drowning in lakes of butter, and oceans of gravy, and Parker House rolls—this is Chicago, after all—crowned by a warm gushing pie. As always, there is a large cut-glass jar of hard sauce to ladle onto the pie. “I know how much you love hard sauce,” Marge would say, and I would dutifully dollop it on. That would be the last time I ever had hard sauce.

  Later that evening—I trust Pieter had gone to bed—talk turns to my marriage plans. I don’t know how far I get into my story. Probably not an inch. I know I am never asked the obvious questions, such as how Clem and I met, what he does for a living . . . Within minutes, my usually passive father, who never, to my knowledge, has had anything to say about anything in heaven or on earth, leans forward and starts to tell a joke about a Jew and a priest. And then another and another. No one laughs but him. His Scotch shivers in his glass. Soon he is talking about “Them.” “They’re all alike.” He has to deal with them in business, but he has never had one of them in his house. As with the Augustins, that he has never met Clem matters not at all.

  I sit on the lavender couch, wedged between Marge’s oversized purple pillows, as a lifetime of anti-Semitism pours over me. He is now on his feet. His mouth won’t stop. Jews have ruined the country, now they’re out to ruin his family. All punctuated with, “dirty Jew” this, and “goddamned kike” that. Where am I? Why am I here? Who is this man who looks like me and is so vile? Somehow I find my voice. “Stop! If you don’t stop, I’ll leave. And I’ll never come back.” He doesn’t stop. I escape to my room off the kitchen.

  No grand exit. No slamming door. Unlike Christmas Eve, there is no elevator down to the street. No taxi to Clem and the rest of my life. I’m stuck until morning with my rage and humiliation. Once again I am deemed to be of no value; bigotry has won out. If possible, my father’s tirade is more virulent than my uncle’s. If possible, I feel even more jumped in the dark and punched out. The silent cipher has sprung to life, like a monster in a horror movie. Above all, that night in Chicago the stakes have been higher, and sadder. This is my father who has now thrown me away. Twice.

  That first time. He must hav
e left in the dark. He must have; otherwise, I would have heard him go out the front door. Did he carry a suitcase? He must have, at least one. My mother must have packed the rest, the suits and ties and underwear. Those things must have all left the house while I was at kindergarten at Mademoiselle Hupert’s house, two roads away and around many bends. His things must have left quickly, because they left no smell or even a mote of dust. Not a stray sock.

  My mother must have cried as she packed up the Adulterer’s things. She must have lingered over this shirt or that monogrammed handkerchief. She must have sat down now and then, overcome by shock, and bewilderment, and terrible pain. I knew nothing. I was never told anything. Not even that he had gone. But I knew he must have left in the dark. And, like the obedient child that I was, I erased all images of him from my mind. My memories of him had been tucked into those suitcases, and I never saw them again.

  The next morning, Marge corrals me for a tête-à-tête, reeling off a Ladies’ Home Journal list of reasons to think twice: cultural differences, children raised in a different faith, when you’re forty he’ll be sixty-five, he’ll die when you’re still young . . . I look at her blankly, at her flat, pan face. The outlandish image of Clem in a yarmulke drifts across the room. She hasn’t a clue about who I am, who Clem is. And it doesn’t matter. My father is a no-show. No good-byes. Once again, no good-byes. How could there be? There has never been anything “good” between us.

  In Denver, things ran true to form. I knew my brother: hail-fellow, cocky, always with his eye on the next big deal, happiest with a rifle or fishing rod in hand, and tight with a buck. There was no racist rant from Norden. But no commiseration with me over my Chicago tale, either. In fact, he was taken aback by my mass alienation of our family. That they were the ones who had alienated themselves from me never penetrated. In his fatherly/brotherly way, he offered his advice. The gist, to mix platitudes: Sit on the fence, and you’ll never burn your bridges. And, consistent as always, he didn’t burn his bridge with me. That would happen a year later, when he and Clem met. They quickly developed, on their own personal terms, a mutual dislike that deepened over time and that in turn intensified my own, already hefty dossier of resentments toward my brother.

  On that visit, though Norden didn’t provide the huggy, warm reassurance that I craved, he did his best and I enjoyed my time with him. He threw a birthday party for me. We went skiing—well, let’s say I tried. I met and liked his girlfriend, Lou, whom he would soon marry. And one day, armed with leftover cans of house paint and fat brushes, I painted an abstract mural in his basement rec room. My way of thumbing my nose at all the full-of-themselves artists I was meeting—hell, anyone can do this!—even as I danced with exhilaration at the sheer fun of it. I don’t think I told Clem. It was a one-shot and it was all mine. I even spent a snowed-in night in a mountain lodge with a forgettable friend of Norden’s. I had an irrepressible urge to see, just once, what another penis looked like before I disappeared forever into monogamy. I didn’t tell Clem about that, either.

  I flew home the next day. I had visited the two men I had been dealt at birth. Though both had fallen short in demonstrating their love in the past, I had harbored the wish that they would have stepped up now. Perhaps, hearing the final call of Electra, I had wanted them to be jealous of this man who was snatching away their only daughter and sister. I had wanted to hear the words “Come live with me, I will take care of you.” Not that I would have ever done that, but I wanted to hear the words, or something like them, simply because I never had. Instead, in a raging blizzard, Norden waved me a breezy good-bye, and I flew to LaGuardia, landing after midnight in yet another blizzard. I spent the night in the airport, before a bus made it through and took me to New York, and Bank Street, and Clem.

  To celebrate my return and, belatedly, my birthday, Clem had gotten tickets for The Pajama Game for the following night. He had also, in an adorable spurt of domesticity, bought new sheets at Gimbels. The die was cast. And to the buoyant strains of “Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes”—our official favorite song—I assumed my new role: Wedding Planner.

  MARRIED

  THE HOW AND WHERE we would get married mattered little to me. But the when, that was important. Somehow, May struck me as the perfect month, neither too soon nor too far off. And the fourth, the first Friday, would be the ideal weekday, workaday kind of day to suit Clem’s no-big-deal parameters. And so it would be.

  Meanwhile, our social life of drop-ins—whoever called during the day would be invited to come by for a drink around six—and parties rolled on much as before. On everyone’s schedule were the gallery prowls, usually the first Tuesday night of the month for openings and Saturday afternoons for seeing everything else. We would start on Fifty-seventh Street, then wander north on Madison, winding up at, say, Tibor de Nagy or Martha Jackson’s, who could be counted on to be serving drinks. These nights were like parties, meeting, as one did, friends along the way and ending up around large tables at some low-end bar or restaurant. More often than not, we would then head back downtown to the Five Spot or the Cedar.

  In a matter of months, the pace seemed to speed up. More galleries, more openings, more painters from abroad, more new faces passing through our eighteen-by-eighteen-foot living room. Artists who weren’t selling at their galleries now sneered louder at other artists who they said were “selling out” to the newly roused media. For years, Jackson Pollock had been the prime whipping boy, ever since his spread in Life, which, as skeptical as the tenor of the piece was, had turned a national spotlight on him and the “new” abstract expressionist painting. Now, everyone was fair game. In unison, artists took to task the Johnny-come-lately museum directors and craven collectors who were limping warily onto the belatedly perceived bandwagon, buying a bit of this and that on spec, before hastily retreating uptown in their big cars with uniforms at the wheel.

  While I was still swooning over movie star sightings, celebrities were beginning to swoon over the artists. In 1956, the flamboyantly rich Ben Sonnenberg, the so-called “father of public relations,” had heard the bandwagon loud and clear and contacted Clem. There were drinks, a few lunches, sometimes including me, sometimes not, always unsparingly charming. One day Clem and I were walking down Madison Avenue, when a Rolls-Royce touring car from the thirties pulled up. Of course it was Ben, inviting us to join him. In a castle on wheels, we seemed to float high above the street, the crystal flower vases by the windows, a rose in each. When Ben got out at his destination, he told the driver to take us home. I held Clem’s hand and resisted waving at the peasants as we sailed down Fifth Avenue. Surely it was the most exotic and grandest of all the rich people’s cars that ever had or ever would pull up outside 90 Bank Street.

  Soon Ben began inviting us to his lavish parties in his mansion on the south side of Gramercy Park. Number 19 comprised two elegant townhouses melded into one. Oh, that house, with its seductive excess, replete with circular staircase, ballroom, art of the Masters, and plushness of the rich. And brass, Ben’s signature touch, was everywhere, as art or decoration. As he did with all his passions, he indulged in brass beyond measure, all floors fairly ablaze with it and polished by a special “brass polisher,” as if to vie with the sun, as if to put gold to shame.

  For all his worldly persona, Ben was an ardent family man, oozing with gemütlichkeit. It took a few intimate visits to get to see that his heart belonged to his wife, Hilda, whom I met only twice and who rarely attended the parties. It was in the midst of one of those soirees that Ben asked if Clem would go have a chat with his son and gave us directions to his room. The sounds of the party faded as we passed through a labyrinth of dark corridors, eventually knocking at a door of a small room dominated by a tall young man who, though shy, seemed to take our visit in stride. Clem drew him out about his interests. They talked of art and writing. Not a chip off the old block, he might as well have been a student in a garret in the Village. I thought, Like mother, like son. I knew that Hilda,
too, had chosen to absent herself from Ben’s world and spent most of her time in their house in Provincetown. The notion of Hilda and Ben’s marriage of intimate distance intrigued me. It was new to me. I wondered if Clem’s world would ever get so big that it would take forty rooms to hold us in harmony.

  Ben understood that the fun of a party was in the collision of worlds. Nothing random, everything about Ben was contrived. Most people were there because they were interesting, beautiful, very rich, or famous. In my fanciest duds—I had now graduated from Peter Pan to an off-the-shoulder black number—I devoured from afar the likes of Kirk Douglas, Montgomery Clift, and Maureen O’Hara.

  One night, Clem and I found ourselves pressed close to Janet Gaynor and her husband, Adrian, the fabled costume designer of the thirties. By now, I had come to accept the diminutiveness of movie folk, but those two were the tweeniest of them all, and between the din and their soft-spokenness, I almost had to squat to hear them. They were way before my time, but I was slightly reassured when Ben whispered that Gaynor had won the first Academy Award in 1928. Then suddenly the star blazed with excitement as she cried out, “It’s him. It’s really him!” I turned, expecting Jesus, and saw only Bill de Kooning coming toward us. We introduced them and left them to their twittering awe.

  I was even more taken aback when, at another party, a few months later, this one given by theatrical lawyer Bill Feitelson, I watched Rosalind Russell and Gloria Swanson close in on Clem, foot-long eyelashes fluttering as they cooed about art. I wondered what planet I was on. I think Clem wondered, too.

  The art rush was on. The cash registers were beginning to ka-ching. As bemused as I was by the fervor of it all, I was also aware of how long it had been in coming. I knew that since the late thirties, Clem had been writing about abstract expressionism and these artists, heralding their work as the best new art being produced anywhere. Here, Paris, anywhere. What was it about his lovely hazel eyes that they were able to see what others couldn’t?