by Warren Adler
He felt certain it was another one of those, although he had immediately put a name to the person imagined. Dotty Frank. He no longer concentrated on the figures on the computer screen. The laptop was merely a prop now. Still he dared not turn full face and assess the woman.
Was it fear of confronting the embarrassment of mistaken identity or the fact of true recognition? Why the odd reaction? He was, after all, a man of the world, a grandfather, married more than forty years, on the cusp of retirement, an accomplished and respected member of the accounting profession. He was coming home from a speaking engagement in Los Angeles where he had been properly applauded and honored by his peers. Then why the sudden nervousness? Perspiration was rolling down from his underarms. His stomach was in knots.
The stewardess came by and he ordered a double scotch, for him an unusual occurrence. Mostly he drank white wine these days, but suddenly the need for a jolt of what he characterized as Dutch courage assailed him. The memories of Dotty Frank flooded his mind, as if they had been pent up somewhere in his subconscious and were mysteriously uncorked.
Like a movie, the images rolled out with such strong fidelity that he felt actualized into the narrative of what had occurred nearly five decades before. How old was Dotty then? Sixteen, he remembered, and he was eighteen and it was summer and they had fallen in love. It came back to him now with all the power and ecstasy of what he felt at that period in his life, that maddeningly obsessive all-encompassing sensation of total possession and need.
How had it happened? He remembered only that she was there, a love object so profound that it crowded out everything else and fixated itself on this lovely blonde girl woman whose look and touch represented nirvana. It was summer and they lived, each with their parents, in Rockaway Beach in little bungalows, colonies of people escaping the city heat.
He and Dotty were part of what then was referred to as a “crowd,” a group of like teenagers from middle-class families, mostly lower, who huddled together like a single species, staking their blanket territories on the beach and moving together like a single organism. Some, like he and Dotty, paired off as sweethearts. After a day at the beach they would gather on the boardwalk, still in staked-out territory, where they danced to nickel jukebox tunes and paired off later to, as they called it then, neck and pet.
Dotty was still in high school and he had just finished his first year at City College, having taken the obligatory liberal arts courses preparatory to choosing a major. That summer, he was enrolled in extra credit work but that only took two mornings a week, and he always made it back to Rockaway in time for lolling on the beach with the crowd and, of course, especially to be with Dotty.
They were inseparable, he remembered, as if they lived in a private paradise. He thought of nothing but Dotty. She was the epicenter of his world. He wrote her daily love notes, composed love poetry, bought her a “slave” bracelet to wear on her ankle, engraved with the words “forever yours.” Thoughts of Dotty filled his mind whenever he opened his eyes in the morning until he closed them at night. He supposed she filled his dreams as well.
When the social part of the night was over, they would go to some secluded place, a corner of a bungalow porch somewhere, or on a blanket on the beach, wherever some semblance of privacy could be found. There they kissed, hands caressing body parts, and grew progressively bolder in their lovemaking until at some point very late in the summer they went, as they said in those days, “all the way.”
It was the first time for both of them, a scary and somewhat clumsy experience, more bonding than pleasurable, but memorable and profound nonetheless. He recalled professions of eternal undying love, pledges of lifetime fealty. Each had the sense, he was certain, that that summer was to be the quintessential incandescent moment of their lives, the beginning of what would be forever. To hold Dotty in his arms, to kiss her, become part of her, was paradise found, unbounded joy for eternity. She was and would forever be the love of his life.
As the past reeled its way through his mind, he could not remember conversations between them, although he could recall the salt-tinged air and the soft feel and smell of her flesh and the taste of her lips. He supposed that, in retrospect, as time progressed, first loves were always like that, clichés of obsession, romantic love at white heat, fueled by stories and poems rendered by others who had experienced similar flights of ecstasy.
When the summer was over, the reality of geography and the routines and rituals of their lives kept them physically apart. Jason lived in Brooklyn and Dotty lived in the Bronx. This meant that Jason, on Saturday nights, which was the only courting time available to them in those days, had to take the more than hour-long trip by subway to be with Dotty.
Being completely alone was difficult. Dotty lived in a tiny apartment with her parents and slept on a studio bed in the living room. It was not exactly conducive to leisurely sexual congress and what little privacy they could get obliged them to either pursue their lovemaking in hurried encounters or postpone it for their next date. It did not diminish their ardor and he could never get through a day without at least two or three telephone conversations with Dotty. He continued to write his usual barrage of love notes and poems and her absence from his daily life made him crazy with longing. Being separated from her was agony.
There had been no doubt in his mind that their commitment to each other was total. She was never out of his thoughts and he assumed that such devotion was matched by her. Thinking about this now, decades later, it surprised him that these feelings returned with such power as if nothing had occurred in the intervening years, his subsequent courting of his wife, another experience of falling in love, the births of his children, his financial success, the multitude of incidents and the endless chain of events that constitute a life lived. Indeed, everything that had occurred to him in his life since his experience with Dotty fell into another category as the power of this memory of his teenage experience with Dotty dominated his thoughts.
Now the dark side intervened, cutting through the old scar tissue and recalling the pain.
One Saturday, he arrived in her neighborhood in the Bronx earlier than usual. As he approached her apartment building, he noticed a group of young people, as they did in those days, hanging out in front of a candy store. As always, his heart leaped at the sight of her. Suddenly he froze. She was being embraced by another boy, a tall boy in a leather jacket. He held her from the rear, arms around her waist, a gesture that declared easy and, as it registered on him, longstanding intimacy.
The effect on him was profound. His heartbeat accelerated, his breath came in short gasps, his legs grew wobbly. Even in memory, he could feel the pain of this revelation. He was consumed by what he supposed was jealous rage. He was certain that he was observing betrayal in its most basic guise.
How could she? The line became a repetitive refrain. He wanted to move forward in blind anger and fight the boy who had absconded with his girl. He wanted to conquer him, humiliate him, disgrace him. He felt diminished, intimidated, his self-respect and his honor besmirched.
Worse, he began to contemplate how deep the betrayal ran. Was Dotty having sex with him? By his lights at that moment in time no crime was greater than that. He felt himself suddenly afflicted with a monstrous plague. She had sullied their love, had lied to him, trampled on something so sacred and precious to him, that he suddenly felt worthless and suicidal.
He remembered watching the couple part with kisses and laughter and Dotty disappeared into the entrance to her apartment house. At that point, he saw no other choice than to proceed with their date. It was, of course, impossible to dismiss what he had seen, but then he allowed some rational thinking to intrude. Perhaps it was just innocent horseplay. Nothing serious. Maybe his imagination got the best of him. He forced himself to give Dotty the benefit of the doubt. Her life in the Bronx was different than her summer life in Rockaway. She had grown up here, had other friends, ano
ther crowd. He was jumping to conclusions.
Still, he knew he could not live without knowing the truth and he was determined to get it. As he moved up the stairs to her apartment, he met her parents.
“Hi, Jason,” her mother said as they greeted him warmly.
“Off to the movies,” her father said, smiling.
To him that meant that they would have the apartment to themselves for at least a couple of hours, a rare gift. In those days, parents felt somewhat certain that their teenage children were observing the proprieties and sexual conduct was regulated more by caution and discipline, since the consequences could bring disgrace and ostracism. These were the days before the pill and the sexual revolution was still far into the future.
Jason and Dotty had indeed crossed the line, rationalized by the intensity of their love for each other. They knew the risks. The condom was the accepted method of birth control, although that did not fully mitigate the anxiety of a missed period and the terrible fear of pregnancy.
Such thoughts, he was certain, did enter into the equation of his anger. What was worse than an unwanted pregnancy was being blamed for a conception that was not caused by him.
Immediately upon entering her apartment, the passion of possession moved him to fierce sexual aggression, which both surprised and delighted her. Calmer and more cerebral than he had been when he had first observed her with the other boy, he plotted his interrogation. He was determined to know the truth. However he tried to rationalize what he had seen, things had changed between them.
They lay together on the living room couch, tightly embraced. Suddenly he said. “I saw you with that boy.” He felt her body stiffen.
“What boy?” she asked.
“The one in the leather jacket.”
“Bobby?”
“That one. Yes, Bobby.”
He watched her face. Her eyelids fluttered, betraying her sudden nervousness.
“He’s a friend.”
“Just a friend?”
“I saw you together. It seemed more than just a casual friendship.”
“Who told you that?”
“Never mind.”
He was relentless now. Nothing was going to stop him. He was willing to try anything, push ahead without mercy.
“They were lying,” Dotty said, defensive now.
“Were they?”
“Yes, they were.” He noted the first signs of hysteria. Clearly she was covering something up. He went further.
“I know the whole story.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She had moved away from him, sitting upright now. Her face was flushed and he imagined that her guilt was palpable.
“You let him,” he pressed.
“I did not,” she said.
“Yes, you did. They told me.”
“Who are they?”
“It’s true, isn’t it? You let him. You let him do it to you.”
“I did not,” she said again, but tears had welled in her eyes and were spilling over her cheeks.
“How could you?” he asked, his stomach in knots. He felt nauseous.
“I didn’t…”
It was obvious to him now. Her certainty was collapsing.
“You did, didn’t you?”
He was gentler now, acting as if he was ready to forgive her.
“It happened,” she whispered.
“Many times,” he said with certitude.
“I’m so sorry, Jason. I didn’t mean to.”
“How could you do this?” he asked, his throat constricting.
“It’s you I love, Jason,” she said. Tears came in gushes now. Her face contorted. “I’m so sorry, Jason. So sorry.”
“I never want to see you again,” he said.
He could remember leaving the apartment, standing outside in the street, leaning against a lamppost crying hysterically, but he could not recall the long subway ride home. Days of agony followed. He lost interest in school, in everything. His conduct alarmed his parents, although he tried valiantly to keep them from knowing the cause of his melancholy. He picked up the phone numerous times to call her, but he never did. Had she called? He couldn’t remember.
He was not sure how long the effects of this trauma lasted, although the power of its recall brought back the pain despite the distance of time. He could not recall a single incident in his life since that had caused him such pain.
Finally, the Dutch courage kicked in and he was recalled to the present. He shut the computer, reattached the tray, and turned to the woman beside him. She was still concentrating on her book.
“Don’t I know you?” he began, inspecting her now. Behind her glasses, he recognized her eyes, hazel, green in good light. She looked up and observed him.
“I’m not sure,” she said. The voice, the tone. He was certain. His heart pumped and he felt his lip quiver.
“Jason Haskell,” he said, forcing a smile.
She looked at him for a long moment, then recognition came.
“Oh my God, Jason,” she smiled. That was different, he noted. Dental work. Implants, he decided.
“Hair gone, as you can see.” He patted his bald head.
“I can’t believe it. Jason Haskell.”
“Dotty Frank,” he said, his throat constricting.
“Gartenhaus now. Been for years.”
She watched him and he wondered what she was recalling.
“So what have you been doing all these years?” she asked, casual, comfortable, bemused by the coincidence.
He related the bare facts, his occupation, his long marriage, his children, where he lived. It was brief, like a tight paragraph in Who’s Who. She listened and smiled.
“How wonderful,” she said, rubbing her chin. “Can’t believe it. Wait’ll I tell Hal. That’s my husband. We live in Westchester. I have five grandchildren and shuttle between them. That’s where I was in California. Calabasas.” She reached into her pocketbook and brought out a sheaf of pictures, and passed them one at a time to him. “That’s Barry, my son-in-law, with Joanie my daughter and the kids. The children are amazing. You wouldn’t believe how smart they are. Gladdie wants to be a doctor and Charles is a budding scientist. He wants to go to MIT and believe me, he has the marks.” She pulled more pictures from her bag. “This is Larry and Sean, my grandkids that live in Boston. Could you imagine five grandchildren? I know. I know. I’m a professional grandmother, but I’m so proud, Jason, so proud.”
It went on and on. There was no stopping her, as if a plug had been pulled. He must have seemed interested, since his look of concentration only encouraged her to tell more and more about the grandchildren. His thoughts were elsewhere, lost in memory of another time and, he was certain, another person. This could not be the Dotty Frank he knew and worshipped. Not this little compact gray-haired woman who obsessed about her grandchildren, about whom he had little interest.
He stole a glance at his watch. Three hours to go. He was trapped, his mind searching for excuses to end the conversation. The revelations of the trauma of the past disappeared from his thoughts, although he wondered if his own history struck her as dull. She was merely reporting her life, which had little emotional content worthy of conversation, one long monologue that, after a while, seemed distant and agonizingly, crushingly, boring.
From time to time, he interrupted politely.
“Sounds like you had quite a life.”
“I’ve been very lucky, Jason,” a comment which set her off again. It became increasingly apparent that she had no interest in his life, and was totally absorbed in her own.
The stewardess came by with their meals. The proximity was almost unendurable. He ordered two more scotches and a couple of glasses of wine and still the surge came. By the time, the plane landed he was lightheaded and ver
y grateful that the ordeal had come to an end…
“Well, it was great bumping into you, Dotty,” he said, as he unfastened his safety belt.
“Wonderful. I can’t wait to tell Hal,” she said.
He proceeded to the exit, relieved, swearing never again to trust nostalgia.
Suddenly, she tore off a partially blank page from her paperback and wrote her telephone number on it. He noted that it was the title page from a romance novel, “The Fatal Kiss.”
He rushed down the aisle, thankful that his rollaway on the overhead bin contained all his possessions and he did not have to endure her at the baggage claim. As he got into a cab to take him home to his Manhattan apartment, he rolled the title page into a ball and tossed it out the window.
Just Wild About Harry
“It seems so unfair to keep such a large dog in a New York apartment,” Bud said. It was his regular role to walk Harry on the fringes of Central Park before he and Shirley went to bed. Their apartment was on Fifth Avenue overlooking the park on East 66th street.
“You always say that when you have to walk him.”
Days, they had a regular walker who charged twenty-five dollars an hour. Shirley had insisted that the walker be exclusive to Harry every afternoon for at least two hours.
“Big dogs need lots of exercise,” she had asserted, countering Bud’s argument. The action neutralized Bud’s contention, although he expressed annoyance at the expense.
Mornings, in all seasons, Shirley would rise at six to take Harry to the no-leash section of the park where he romped with the other dogs in the early morning group. On rare occasions when Shirley was sick, Bud would do the honors.
“All they do is chase around and hump each other,” Bud told her. “Maybe we should have Harry fixed.”
“No way, Bud. How would you like someone to do that to you?”
“Ouch.”
“They do fix the girls,” Shirley informed him.