Hot Flashes

by Raskin, Barbara;

  We are still terrible spellers. Phonetically crippled by 1940s “sight reading” methods, we never learned how to sound out words or distinguish between long and short vowels. We still can’t tell the TV networks apart or dare to make non-changeable airline reservations seven days in advance. We continue to be self-conscious dancers, impatient gardeners, fast typists, good drivers, erratic cooks and lazy—but inventive—lovers. We remain firmly convinced that grapefruit juice can destroy already digested calories and that wearing a tampon all day before a heavy date will tighten up tired, slightly stretched-out, sexual passages.

  Suddenly I am invaded by an enormous but imprecise feeling of peril that makes my heart start pumping iron. I slide off the chaise and onto my feet in a swift swirl of motion, hoping to preempt any opposition.

  “Don’t you think we should be getting back, Joanne? Elaine doesn’t even know where we are—and Mr. Smilow will be coming in this afternoon.”

  Joanne immediately senses my feeling of urgency and prepares to leave without any protest at all.

  CHAPTER 13

  So it is still before ten when we unlock Sukie’s front door and walk back toward the kitchen where the telephone is ringing. Elaine, who is sitting in her customary chair at the table, answers it as I push open the door.

  “Yes?” she intones. Barefoot and wrapped in her caftan, she listens, nods, and says yes several more times before replacing the receiver.

  “Who’s that?” Joanne demands, following me through the doorway.

  “Norman Naylor. That shrink Sukie used to date.”

  “No shit,” Joanne groans. “What’d he want?”

  “He wanted to know if someone would be here so he could come over and pick up something he’d left.”

  “Like what? The family silver?” Joanne sneers. “Oh boy. I’m really going to keep my eye on him. I’m not going to leave him alone for a minute.”

  Elaine shrugs, stands up and walks to the refrigerator. Opening the door, she studies the interior as if reading a table of contents. After a few minutes she returns to the table carrying a restaurant-size enamel baking pan covered with tinfoil.

  “Where were you?” she asks.

  “We went to take a swim at the Hilton.”

  “I know this is a lasagna,” she says, removing the tinfoil as if unveiling a portrait. “I saw it Friday when we got here. I can’t believe Sukie made a lasagna.”

  We all look into the pan. It is three-quarters full. There is a thick frosting of half-melted mozzarella cheese and several chunks of undissolved canned tomatoes clinging to the ghostly white noodles. Elaine fetches a fork, sits down and starts eating the cold lasagna directly out of the pan. Her fork cuts a swath through the noodles, moving methodically from left to right and then back from right to left like a typewriter carriage.

  It is now midmorning of Day Three as I sit watching Elaine transport heaping loads of pasta up to her face. I wonder whether she likes eating the lasagna because Sukie made it or whether she is just hungry. I wonder if Sukie made it for some special dinner the night before she died. Perhaps Jeff would know something about this lasagna if we ever see him again and can ask. Certainly it’s unusual to find a pan of pasta in Sukie’s refrigerator. She was the one who always reminded us that Gloria kept only grapefruits and club soda in her fridge, and since Gloria has remained scrupulously slim, she serves as our anti-fat touchstone or talisman.

  Joanne gets up and walks over to the silverware drawer. She extracts a fork, pauses, looks at me and then down again at the utensils.

  “You want one?”

  I nod.

  Back at the table, she sits down, hands me my fork and plunges her own into the pan of lasagna. I do the same.

  We are about to expand our suffering with a siege of suicidal overeating.

  Here is a list of what we consume during the next forty minutes:

  ⅓ jar sweet pickles

  ½ quart Oreo-flavored ice cream

  ½ jar artichoke hearts marinated in heavy oil

  2 stale jelly donuts

  ½ jar stuffed green olives

  1 package pressed ham

  1 stone-hard whole-wheat pita bread

  3 hard-boiled eggs, so aged that the yokes taste metallic

  ¼ package Entenmann’s cherry cheesecake

  ⅓ jar capers

  1 teenager-sized bag of Utz Bar-B-Que potato chips

  ¼ half-frozen Entenmann’s Bavarian cream coffeecake

  3 Amstel Light beers

  While eating, we retell several of our favorite eating epics.

  “Remember when Sukie went out to the beach for a weekend with that lawyer she liked from Boston and starved herself so bad that by Sunday afternoon when they stood up to shake the sand off their blanket, she fainted? And then the medic on the ambulance told the lawyer she was suffering from self-induced dehydration?”

  We laugh and keep on eating.

  “Remember when Joellen did the same kind of number? She didn’t eat anything solid from Friday night until Sunday morning—only a little white wine—so when that guy she still goes with took her to a restaurant Sunday morning and went into the men’s room, Joellen stuck her fingers inside a jar of jelly on the counter and got them jammed in so tight that what’s-his-name had to drive her to Southampton so the jar could be broken by a doctor in case the glass severed any of her arteries?”

  Joanne giggles at Elaine’s story. I hadn’t heard that one before either and the thought of chic, sleek Joellen Darling getting herself in such a fix makes me laugh so hard some sweet pickle juice tickles my throat and makes me choke.

  Elaine decides to elaborate further:

  “Later on she told me that the whole time she was in the emergency room, all she could think about was a scene from some hard-times Depression movie she’d seen, where a starving drifter went into a diner, drank a whole bottle of ketchup and then escaped before anyone could catch him.”

  Oh, how many times have we gobbled laxatives in frenzied guilt over our orgiastic eating or swallowed toothpaste in an unlit motel bathroom because we had starved ourselves into delirium? Joanne once told me she ate half a tube of Dentagard in the bathroom of a new lover’s apartment because she felt faint from hunger but too shy to ask for any food. And even then, when reduced to eating toothpaste, she remained nervous enough to carefully observe the direction in which the man had squeezed his tube, so as not to cause him any aggravation the next morning that might turn him against her.

  For the first time, Joanne pauses in her nonstop eating. “You know, there’s a new over-the-counter high-fiber pill that kills your appetite if you take it thirty minutes before a meal.”

  “How would we know?” Elaine inquires, raising another forkful of lasagna up to her mouth. “I mean how would we know we were about to have a meal?”

  We are impulse eaters, the culinary equivalent of kleptomaniacs. Often we discuss the binger found unconscious in her New York apartment surrounded by empty deli containers of coleslaw, pasta, three-bean and potato salad, who had passed out from overeating and was rushed to a hospital to have her stomach pumped. Later she told a psychiatrist that she was unable to stop herself from hitting every delicatessen on the way home from work and buying a pint of each item on sale.

  Joanne is now gliding between the cupboard, the refrigerator and the counter, busily smearing butter and garlic flakes over some English muffins she’s discovered in a recycled Medaglia d’Oro coffee can. Sukie believed muffins stayed fresher refrigerated and that the design of a coffee can—perfectly shaped to contain a stack of muffins—proved her theory.

  Joanne is preparing to toast the muffins when suddenly the doorbell rings. Although we are momentarily startled, a second later we calmly rise and methodically but swiftly begin to clear away any signs of food consumption. Quickly Joanne sweeps the garlicky muffin crumbs off the counter into the cup of her hand while starting to stuff emptied containers into the garbage can. Elaine whisks the empty lasagna pan into th
e sink where she directs hot water from the rubber vegetable spray (that only devoted homemakers such as Elaine and our mothers used) into the burnt, crusty corners, while I dance between table and sink, whipping a wet sponge over one surface after another.

  Within minutes, the scene of our culinary crimes is spotless and Elaine rushes off to answer the second, louder and longer ring of the bell.

  When she reappears, Dr. Norman Naylor is following her, making wide irritated sweeps with his arms to push Happy away. The dog is trying to get the doctor’s attention by leaping up and lunging at his thigh before snow-plowing, with uncut nails, down his trouser leg.

  Dr. Norman Naylor is short, stocky and close to fifty. He has beautifully bonded teeth, a contact-lens gleam in his dark, darting eyes and an undulating hairline. What remains of his thin lusterless hair is reluctantly parted into something resembling an EKG wave, since he draws longer hairs from either side over his central bald spot. Even on this sweltering Labor Day weekend, he is wearing a suit and tie.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Naylor. Norman Naylor,” he says in a nasal voice that betrays serious allergies as well as a possible deviated septum. “I was a good friend of Sukie’s.”

  “Yes,” I say sarcastically. “Sukie told us all about you.”

  Immune to sarcasm, Norman Naylor tosses me a quick, insincere smile before sneaking a covetous look at Joanne—the prototypical shiksa star of major Jewish wet dreams. Joanne, although still wearing the long T-shirt over her bikini, looks, as always, as if she’s on her way to a cocktail party. Glamour oozes from her pores like sweat from lesser women.

  “This is truly a tragedy,” Norman continues, stationing himself in the center of the kitchen. “A great tragedy. Sukie was a fine woman. She’d been going through a rough period, no doubt about that, but then most women her age getting divorced usually do. That’s why I have an ironclad rule not to date any woman who hasn’t been divorced—and I don’t mean just separated—for more than two years. Before then, they’re simply too upset. In fact, Sukie was the only exception I ever made to that rule, and that proved to be a bad mistake. But it’s really tragic she died just when she was beginning to come around.”

  Now it’s a shocked silence that bounces around the room. Joanne is staring at Norman with incredulity. I see a flush of anger stain Elaine’s face and I feel my own heart start to pound at the door of my chest.

  Hot flash …

  Dr. Norman Naylor has been sent to us to diminish any discord in our ranks by providing an external threat that will automatically reunite us. Actually it feels quite wonderful to be gathered in Sukie’s kitchen hating Norman Naylor in unison. We know, from Sukie, that Norman is a divorce vulture who makes a career out of exploiting newly single-again women. Indeed, Norman is obviously suffering an internal struggle over whether to go for Joanne, the chancy super-shiksa, or Elaine, the clearly available Jewish Geisha who would obviously be grateful for any opportunity to be of service. A risk-averse person, Norman is in a wretched state of conflict reminiscent of comic-book Archie, who was always torn between blond Betty and brunette Veronica.

  By now, all the women of our generation are fed up with all the Normans who have passed through our lives. A classic Norman is immediately identifiable because he has a totally unwarranted, swaggering attitude similar to the kind sported by MVP athletes.

  “I bet everyone teases you about Norman Mailer, with your names rhyming the way they do,” Elaine ventures with a visible absence of malice. Clearly she recognizes a suitable suitor for herself, even though a classic Norman is biologically incapable of spontaneously warming up to an Elaine.

  “Oh, sure. All the time. But I’m used to it,” Norman says, smearing his words with mucus manufactured by his overactive sinuses. “Actually, even though he’s a little better writer than I am, we’re not totally dissimilar types.”

  He says this lightly, tone-deaf to who we are and how women like us feel about men like Norman Mailer. Joanne lowers her sunglasses. She had pushed them high on her head to restrain her chlorine-wild hair, but now puts them back in place to hide an expression of enormous contempt in her eyes.

  “So, tell me who all of you are,” Norman says with a saccharine smile.

  Wearily we offer him our names.

  “Listen, if you’re sitting shiva here, I’d like to join you so I can get to know all of you better and hear what each of you does and how each of you knew Sukie.”

  “This isn’t a singles club,” Joanne says sourly.

  Norman smiles. “Of course not. But there’s no reason we can’t try to comfort each other at this time of bereavement, is there?”

  Elaine, who had started the dishwasher, returns to reopen the door and insert some more dirty silverware she’d overlooked.

  Norman releases a howl. “Hey. You can’t … edit that thing while it’s going. All the water’ll come out.”

  Elaine looks up at him as she closes the dishwasher door without releasing a drop of water.

  Norman has now exposed himself as a nudge.

  “Well, just let me take care of one little piece of business before we start to talk,” he says. Then he turns and looks directly at me. “I know it’s hot out there, but would you mind stepping into the hallway with me for one minute?”

  Although startled that Norman has chosen me as his confidante, I follow him out of the kitchen. Away from the air conditioner, the air is so stagnant and heavy that it is difficult to breathe. The house feels like a car with its fan running when someone accidentally turns on the heater instead of the A.C.

  “Listen,” he says. “This is a little embarrassing, but there’s something I left here I need to retrieve.”

  “What is it?”

  “Actually,” he says, “I’m not sure where it is, but it might be up in Sukie’s bedroom.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell me what it is, so I can go find it?”

  He looks at me with increased discomfort and, opening his pouty lips, tries to speak without any success.

  Ahhhhh, I think.

  Hot flash …

  A sweet revenge is moving within reach.

  I step a little closer to Norman.

  “Actually, Diane …”

  “It’s Diana,” I say gently but firmly, hoping to further disconcert him. “Diana.”

  “Well, Diana, it’s a videocassette.” Norman lets the last word spurt forth like a belch for which he isn’t responsible.

  “But how long has it been here?” I ask with innocent incredulity. “I thought you’d stopped seeing Sukie months ago.”

  “Well, yes, I did. I mean, we did. Of course, I was sorry that it had to happen, but she was getting serious and I thought it best to slow things down.”

  Internally, I cringe at his chutzpah. Sukie was only able to tolerate his company for limited periods of time at times of intense loneliness and then only as comic relief.

  “Anyway, I forgot my film here before we parted company.”

  Click.

  He takes a deep breath. “I guess it’s probably up in Sukie’s room. So why don’t I just go up and look?” he asks with a touch of impatience.

  Instantly, I move ahead of him to lead the way upstairs.

  As soon as we enter Sukie’s bedroom I glance behind the TV where several cassettes, which I’d noticed while remaking the bed, are stacked on the broad sill of the bay window. As Norman begins prowling along Sukie’s desk, jarring her books, lifting her papers and carelessly shifting her file folders, I reach for the videocassettes, grab one marked Linda Lace, and quickly insert it into the VCR.

  At the sound of the mechanical clatter, Norman whirls around. But in the time it takes him to cross the room, I hit the control buttons that activate the video and watch the title and pseudonymous credits leap onto the screen.

  “That’s it,” Norman cries, reaching out to turn off the TV.

  But now I insert myself between him and the controls, planting my body in front of the screen as the peculiar percus
sive music—located somewhere between a Lindy and a twist—that plays in most pornographic films begins to pulsate. Immediately I am transported back to my nightlife with Leonard, the big civil libertarian and defender of First Amendment rights, who was a porn junkie.

  The film begins with a good-looking couple awakening in their conjugal bed. The Handsome Hubby reaches over to turn off the clock-radio and then, stark naked, heads to the bathroom while his wife curls up and goes back to sleep. Once in the shower, the Handsome Hubby begins soaping himself and starts to fantasize into cinematic existence a woman who prayerfully kneels down before him under the shower to start playing with his pale pink prick.

  “Good Lord, I’ve never seen anything like this,” I lie.

  “You mean you’ve never seen an X-rated film before?” Norman asks with excited disbelief.

  In truth, there was one porn movie that Leonard enjoyed and played so often I came to feel I was also married to the leading couple.

  “Really,” I answer.

  This one’s for Sukie, I think. Yes sir, this one’s for Sukie.

  Now Norman is standing near the foot of the bed, paler and more anxious-looking than before. “Listen,” he whispers. “This is not the right time to play a movie like this. This is a real pornographic film. Maybe you and I can go back to my place later and watch it, since you’ve never seen one before.”

  “Wait just a minute,” I insist.

  This one’s for Sukie, I repeat to myself, as I watch Handsome Hubby soap his chest while the Fantasy Lady sucks his organ, playfully gliding her tongue up and down the slightly distended, rolled hem of his penis. Next she starts licking the whole thing as if it were a popsicle, and then, afterwards, as if it were a melting ice cream cone.