by Susan Isaacs
I pulled up close to him. Surprisingly, I fell asleep a moment later. The next morning I woke still tired and nauseated, aching. “I have a virus,” I told David.
“Stay here, then. Rest. I’ll come home around one and check up on you.”
But I dragged myself to headquarters and spent a half hour with Paterno—before he began the day’s personal appearances—rehearsing a speech attacking Appel’s plan to restructure the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
“My voice,” said Paterno, rubbing his Adam’s apple. “So strained. You sound awful too.”
“Just fatigue, I think, or a mild virus.”
“Do me a favor then. Move your chair back a little. I can’t afford to come down with anything. You look pale. I’ll tell them to send you in some tea. Tea and lemon, that’s the thing. No sugar. Sidney Appel’s going to have a heart attack when he hears this speech, the way I make fun of him while sounding serious.”
I spent the morning in my office. My electric typewriter had jammed so I was working on a recalcitrant manual which lacked an operable “q.” Around eleven thirty someone knocked on my door but I kept typing, thinking that all the important staff members had my extension number. I half feared it was Jerry, ready for a showdown. I had muttered something to him about spending the night at my Aunt Estelle’s, but by now he must be seeing through my subterfuges.
The banging continued. “Come in,” I finally called.
The door opened and in poked the head of a volunteer. It was a typical volunteer face: young, slightly overweight, earnest, and Jewish. “Excuse me. I hate to bother you,” she said.
“Yes?”
“There’s a woman out front who wants to make a contribution. I wasn’t sure…”
“I’m Marcia Green, the speech writer. Finance is the next door down.”
“I know, Ms. Green. She specifically asked for you. I tried to explain to her, but she was very insistent.” The volunteer’s voice was soft.
“All right,” I said, rising. “What did she say her name was?”
“She didn’t.” I marched down the hall, the volunteer beside me. “Whoever she is,” the girl continued, “she’s a real goddamn pain in the ass, throwing her weight around like she was the fucking Queen of Sheba.”
Aunt Estelle stood right in the center of the reception area, forcing everyone else to detour around her. “I know. I know. You’re busy. I came to give a check to your candidate and take you out to lunch, but it has to be soon because I’m meeting my decorator at one thirty to look at sconces.” Staff members, volunteers, messengers passing through the hall stared at her, at her summer black dress and summer black shoes and summer black straw hat. And white gloves and pearls. She was formidable, like the head of a Matrons for Eisenhower committee who had somehow kept her job through the decades. “Marcia, get me a pen and I’ll make you out a check.”
“Aunt Estelle,” I whispered, “you can’t just come in here like this.”
“You’re finally wearing some makeup and you look very, very nice,” she announced. “I’m glad to see you’re using a light hand with it, not those hideous dark colors.”
I guided her toward my office, ostensibly to give her a pen but really to get her away before she began to berate me in front of six or seven political operatives for wearing shoes with no stockings in Manhattan or to proclaim the advantages of sober Semites over the besotted Irish. As I held her silky, fleshy arm and steered her down the corridor, she was saying, “Such a fine person he is. And brilliant. Law Review at Harvard with Philip. Did he tell you that?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Don’t get cute with me, Marcia,” she snapped. “I came into the city early today because it’s obvious someone has to talk to you and you’ve got your mother and even Barbara walking around on tiptoes and bending over backward not to interfere with your liberation, so it’s fallen on me to be honest with you. And believe me, I’m not afraid to do it.”
“I know you’re not,” I began, and would have finished quite sharply, except I saw Jerry walking down the hall toward us. I smiled and murmured “hi” while opening my office door and nearly shoving my aunt inside. He smiled vaguely at both of us and kept walking.
“Did you see that man?” she demanded. “Did you? He looks like Tyrone Power. With a little Victor Mature thrown in. And those eyes. Blue. What we used to call…”
“Aunt Estelle …”
“… bedroom eyes. Did you see how he smiled at me?”
“That was Jerry Morrissey, Aunt Estelle.”
“That’s the one you’ve been—”
“Yes.”
“Handsome,” she said. “Very nice-looking. But no character in his expression.” She peered around my office. “This is where you work, in such ugliness?”
“It’s temporary. We just rent it for a few months, for the primary. My office in City Hall is much nicer.”
“How old is he?”
“David?”
“The other one.”
“Forty-seven.”
“He looks fifty. Now go wash up and I’ll take you out to lunch. Barbara told me the name of a lovely restaurant a few blocks away and told me to put it on her charge there. They specialize in fine salads.”
“Aunt Estelle, I’m sorry, but I can’t go to lunch. I feel awful. I have a ton of work.”
“You just don’t want to discuss it.”
“What? That I’m seeing David Hoffman? There’s nothing to discuss.”
“He’s a wonderful boy.”
“He’s no boy.”
“Marcia, I hope you’re not making it too easy for him. Don’t get angry with me. For years you’ve been going out of your way to mingle with all sorts of shkotzim just so you could show how independent you are. You’re thirty-five years old—”
“And no spring chicken, right?”
“You’re thirty-five years old and that’s too old to be rebelling against your family. Working in a place like this. That man. What has he ever given you besides a face full of sunshine? And now with David—”
“Do you honestly think before I make a decision about anything—a man, my career—that I sit down and think, ‘How can I manipulate this situation to hurt my family?’ Yes, I want to be independent. I want to find some decent values, and I won’t find them deluding myself that I’m an aristocrat. I want to find out—”
“And how do you find your values? Living with someone who only wants one thing? Is that values? I call that rebellion. But that doesn’t matter. Forget us. We’re not important anymore. What’s important is you. Your future. Do you want emptiness, or do you want the things David Hoffman can give you?”
“You never let up, do you?”
“Someone has to be honest. Listen to me, darling. David is no fly-by-nighter. He’ll always be there for you. He’s one of your own kind.”
Nineteen
My family decided to love me. My aunt called me every day to check on my well-being. “Your virus better? You’re still wearing makeup, aren’t you? Five minutes each morning. That’s all it takes, and what a difference it can make in your life.” She lowered her voice and told me that David had confided in Philip that I was very intelligent.
In the beginning of August, my Uncle Julius telephoned the office. “Sweetheart!” he bellowed. “How’s my girl?”
Had my aunt been near him, she would have ordered him to lower his voice. “You needn’t speak so vociferously, Julius,” she would murmur, like a queen giving the king a tiny royal reminder.
“Fine, Uncle Julius. It’s good to hear from you.”
“Listen, dollface, you know this is August and it’s the middle of my busy season. I mean, some of those ladies on the beach are suddenly realizing that in a few months they’re going to need a fur to keep them warm.” My uncle pronounced “fur” as “fuh.”
“Right, Uncle Julius. I remember.” The air conditioner had resigned its cooling function and seemed willing only to blow hot wet air into my offic
e. My skin was glossy with perspiration.
“So before I get too swamped, I just thought I’d ask you if you want a garment. I have right here—I’m standing in the back of the workroom, you understand—I got a lovely garment, a sheared beaver that wouldn’t overwhelm you.”
“It’s really such a bad time for me now, Uncle Julius.”
“Sure. How many people have the foresight to think of fur when it’s ninety-eight degrees? But come November and you’re shivering—”
“I mean, I really hadn’t budgeted for it. But I appreciate your call.”
“Sweetheart, would I call my own niece soliciting business? This is a gift, sweetheart, from me and Aunt Estelle. Look, you’re going around in good company now. You have to make the right appearances. You’ll come out for dinner one night and we’ll take a drive over to the store and I’ll show you what I have in mind. I’ll fit you myself. People think you can just walk in and buy a garment off the rack, like it was a cheap dress or something.”
“Uncle Julius—”
“I know. You don’t have to say anything. No thanks necessary. We’re family. Just call Aunt Estelle and make a date for dinner.”
David sat at the edge of the bathtub and laughed. “Sheared beaver. It sounds like something in a men’s magazine.”
“It probably looks like it too. It makes me so mad.” But I was calm, lying back in the cool water.
“Don’t get upset.”
“Never,” I said, “never in all those years when I really needed Uncle Julius, when my mother was desperate, did he do anything. A one-hundred-dollar bill every year. And suddenly he’s handing out sheared beaver so I’ll look furry enough to impress you.”
“Of course. Get out of the water. You’ve been in for a half hour and you’re starting to look chilled.” He handed me a towel. “He’s clever, your uncle. First you snare me with sheared beaver, and once I’m hooked I’ll spend the rest of my life buying mink and sable from him.”
“You know, sometimes you talk like a born politician. How devious you are. But I think you’re right.”
“Take the beaver. You’ll get your sable at Bergdorf’s.”
“If you’re trying to buy me, I’d prefer to deal in cash.”
“All right. Are you ready to negotiate?”
“No. I told you, David—”
“I know. No pressure. Would you make me an omelet for dinner?”
My mother called at least once a week with what appeared to be an agenda for a mother-daughter chat. It began with an inquiry into my health and my work and then proceeded into several well-thought-out observations on the state of the world, the nation, and the region, clearly garnered, in page order, from the “Week in Review” section of the Sunday Times. Then she’d ask, “How is David Hoffman?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“How else should he be?”
Once she said, “You know his father, Leo Hoffman, is a very sick man. A heart condition.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Is David an only child?” she asked coolly, trying to be subtle. I told her I wasn’t sure and ended the conversation.
David hated his father. It was not merely profound dislike of a cold parent whose only expressions of interest were “Your jacket is too big” or “You ride like a ranch hand.” His father had isolated him from his brother and his mother and not allowed him anything in compensation.
David’s mother was forty when he was born, and he said she never got over her surprise. Eleanor Cutler Hoffman had been a sculptor of minor repute. She was a charmer, a great hostess, also quite beautiful, with green eyes and thick pale brown hair.
“She always treated me like a guest,” David explained, stretching out his legs on his coffee table. “I would come into her studio to see her, about five in the afternoon, and she’d always sit up straight and say ‘David!’, as if I’d dropped in unexpectedly but she was thrilled to see me. She’d give me tea and we’d talk. I only saw her for an hour, but it was the highlight of my day. She was always so pleased when I came through the door.”
Leo Hoffman joined them occasionally and would tell his wife—in front of David—that she coddled him too much. “He’s a boy, Eleanor, not a suitor. Don’t ruin him.”
David said, “He tried to get her to agree to send me to boarding school in England when I was nine, but she wouldn’t go along. Then he held out for prep school and she almost agreed, but I kicked up such a fuss that she finally convinced him to let me stay home and go to school in Manhattan. You see, she really liked me. When I got older, she stopped giving me tea and offered me a cocktail every afternoon. There I was, a fifteen-year-old boy, drinking whiskey and soda and discussing Nevelson. But it all seemed very natural. We’d laugh, have a great time. She was always so delighted with whatever I said.”
His parents traveled a lot. David believed his father encouraged his mother to spend her winters in Boca Raton and her springs in Europe to keep them apart.
“You really think your father was that venomous? Or was it just that he didn’t care?”
“I think he was venomous. I can’t prove it. But I always felt his feelings were a lot stronger than indifference. I think he saw me as a rival.”
“I think you’re being unfair to him. He didn’t threaten your mother with bodily harm if she didn’t go to Europe. She went because she wanted to go. Don’t overromanticize her. She knew that traveling meant being away from you.”
“She loved me.”
“I’m sure she did. Why shouldn’t she? But if she had really wanted to spend more than an hour a day with you, you know damned well she could have managed it.”
“And your mother was so much better?”
“David, this isn’t a contest. My mother stayed with me because she didn’t have enough money to get to Manhattan, much less Europe. All I’m saying is that maybe you’re putting too much blame on your father.”
“This is a useless discussion. She’s dead.”
When David was in his freshman year of college, his mother discovered she had cancer. She announced it to him on Thanksgiving day. “The doctors are very hopeful,” she told him, patting his hand. By Christmas, he saw the doctors were wrong.
“My father hired private nurses, had an army of doctors. But he was in charge of everything. And he wouldn’t let me come home. He said it would interfere with my schooling and that it was too great a strain for her. She called me, though, once a week, but wouldn’t agree to see me. She said, ‘David, your father asked me not to and I must defer to him. He’s the one who will be around, the one you will have to deal with.’ She said she was feeling fine, getting the best possible care, and I should go ahead with my plans, go to Italy that summer. ‘I’ll be here when you get back,’ she said. I kept trying to change her mind but she refused to defy my father—and I could see the conversations were painful for her. Fatiguing.”
David’s eyes were filmed with tears, but he continued to speak.
“I saw her just twice, right before and after I went to Italy. I was so stunned the first time. She was so thin and so weak. She hardly had any strength in her hand. And then when I came back, it was as if she was barely there. I wanted to stay there, just stay. But my father insisted I get back up to school. And then she stopped calling two weeks after the beginning of the term. I kept waiting and didn’t hear from her. I called my father and asked him what was happening. He said. “Your mother is very ill.” I said I knew that and wanted to see her. He said she was in a hospital, but he wouldn’t tell me where. He said she was comatose and wouldn’t recognize me anyway. I waited six more weeks, and then my Aunt Marjorie—not my father—called to tell me when the funeral was.”
I pulled him next to me, holding him, kissing him, wiping his tears away with my fingers.
“And do you know what the irony of it is?” he whispered. “I always did everything my father wanted of me. I did well socially, academically, professionally. Even during those six weeks,
I kept studying as though nothing were happening, as though she were just away for the winter. I got all A’s that semester. And my father congratulated me, said it showed great forbearance. He said, ‘I’m proud of you, David.’ “He stared at the rug for a moment. “I’m going inside for a little while. I feel like being alone. Excuse me.”
I met my cousin Barbara for lunch the next day. “Tell me about David’s father,” I demanded. “What’s he like?”
“Well, I only met him a couple of times. He seems nice. He has a kind of old-fashioned courtesy and a real dignity. I liked him.”
We sat at a table at Tavern on the Green, a restaurant surrounded by the moist leafiness of Central Park. Barbara leaned back in her chair. Her heavy, dark hair was pinned up on her head, but stray curls fell along her temples and the back of her neck. It looked artless, but she had just come from the hairdresser.
“We have been here over fifteen minutes,” she said, “and all you’ve done is make polite conversation. Now come on, I want to know absolutely everything.”
“What would you like to know?”
“I want to know every minuscule detail about you and David. Really, I think you owe it to me. First of all you met him at my house and … never mind. Just talk. I’m going to sit back and sip sangria and you’re going to fill me in.”
“Okay. I went out with him the Wednesday night after your party. We went to hear Claudio Arrau play Chopin. It was a very nice evening.”
“Marcia, please. I’m leaving tomorrow and I’ll be gone the rest of the summer. How can I go abroad with a clear head if I don’t know what’s happening?”
Every once in a while, the spirit of Aunt Estelle possessed Barbara and would speak through my cousin’s mouth: a word like “abroad” would emerge, a signal that the transfer of souls was complete. “Abroad” was one of those words that my aunt decided demonstrated delicacy of breeding. My Aunt Estelle believed that if you said “sofa” for “couch” and “purse” for “pocketbook,” people would immediately recognize you as gentry. My cousin Barbara had been worked over by her mother for too many years simply to go to Europe.