by Diana Altman
I went out to the hall as he was coming back, maybe from the bathroom. His walk was unusual, as distinctive as his drawing. He undulated, graceful as a giraffe. His hair was brown, straight, shiny, combed over to the side so it fell over one eyebrow. He came right over to me, stood fearlessly in front of me, maybe even a bit too close, and said down into my face, “Hello.”
There was something familiar about him, like I was with a cousin or someone I’d known since kindergarten. I said, “Do you see the model as shapes?”
“I’m trying to,” he replied without stepping back, still right in front of me looking down into my upturned face.
“You’re a good artist.” I felt surrounded by calm.
“Thank you.”
“Are you an artist?”
“Yes. I’m an architect.” Architect? (Wow! That would do. That would do nicely.)
He asked, “What do you do?”
“I’m a writer.” Where did that come from? I was the director of a daycare center in Cambridge who, besides writing grants and newsletters and press releases, also wrote stories at night, sent them out, then got happy if an editor wrote encouraging words on the rejection letter.
“Ever have anything published?”
“No,” I said. “Boo hoo.” I put my forehead on his chest. I touched my forehead to the chest of a total stranger and in that second I got a whiff of that male odor that cannot be bottled. My knees buckled. He said his name was Leo and I told him mine was Sonya but neither of us said our last names.
That night I phoned Stewart and told him we were finished. He said I shouldn’t take our fight so seriously. He had to go on those blind dates. The mothers were friends with his mother. He wasn’t going to take that girl out again. But I was now a different person. If a surgeon opened my head, he would confirm that everything in there had been rearranged. (Thank you, Dr. Goldfarb!)
I couldn’t wait for my next art class. When Leo saw me his face brightened. We stood in the hall talking during class breaks. I discovered that he didn’t have a job and lived at home. No job and living with mother were deal breakers. Yet all I could do was smile when we were together, and my insides felt in a continuous riot of giddiness. I just couldn’t stop smiling when we were together. “How come you live at home?”
“Because I just got home from Vietnam.”
“You were in Vietnam?” Everyone I knew tried to escape going to Vietnam. They got notes from their shrinks saying they were too crazy.
“Yes. I was an officer in the Navy.”
“You got drafted?”
“No. I wanted to serve. I was an officer on a destroyer.”
“You were in the Vietnam War?”
“Yes.”
“You couldn’t get out of it?”
“I didn’t want to get out of it.”
“You didn’t? Why not?”
“I wanted to serve my country.”
“But the war is all wrong.”
“Maybe. Time will tell whether that’s true or not.”
“You got drafted?”
“No. I was in ROTC during college.”
“What?”
“I believe men should serve their country.”
“Did you shoot anybody?”
“Not directly. But I was the gunnery officer. The Admiral came aboard once, and said I had the best guns in the Atlantic fleet.”
“What does the best guns mean?”
“Here’s what I did. There’s a strict hierarchy in the Navy. The lowest is the seaman. It’s important for the guns on a ship to be clean and ready to fire at all times. They need to be oiled and polished. This is not easy to do. They’re huge. On my ship, the petty officer third class in charge of the guns was lazy. He was a bad influence on the seamen whose job it was to keep the guns in good order. The seamen were hard working men, and I could see that they could take no pride in their work. So I fired the petty officer and put one of the seamen in charge of the guns. This was unheard of. I promoted a lower rank above the higher rank. The petty officer complained. I said he was more than welcome to request a transfer. He complained to the Captain. The Captain was my friend not only because we played bridge at night but also because I redesigned the ward room. The result was the seamen were so happy to be given the chance to show what they were capable of and our guns were polished and oiled and ship shape all the time. That’s how I did that.”
Who was this person? “What’s the ward room?”
“Where the officers eat. It was cramped and ugly when I came aboard, so I redesigned it.”
“They knew you were an architect?”
“Sure.”
Nothing was more unfashionable in Cambridge than participating in the Vietnam War. I could hardly believe I was meeting a person who went voluntarily. “I wanted to see the world,” Leo said, “and I did.”
“But you could have just strapped on a backpack and hitch hiked across Europe.”
“No. I wanted to see the world aboard a ship. It was my dream since age ten.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I like boats.”
“How come you don’t have a job?”
“Because I just got home.”
“When?”
“About a week before this class started.”
“Are you going to get a job?”
“Of course. By the way, when we were in line registering for this class, I saw you with that guy you’re sitting next to. He’s not for you.”
Sitting in the passenger seat of Leo’s Saab, being so near him in that small car as he dominated the space behind the wheel, his head almost touching the roof, he seemed intensely other. He did nothing exceptional yet everything he did was fascinating, how he handled the gear shift, his jacket sleeve moving to reveal a thin wrist, how he flicked the blinker, how his hands looked on the wheel, beautiful large graceful hands, how he sat slightly slouched looking out the windshield. He was entirely not me, another species altogether.
We went to a bar called My Father’s Moustache and sat at a table across from each other. I found myself leaning forward to inhale his smell. It took me a while to figure out what was odd about his gaze. He did not keep his eyes on my eyes but more on the area under my eyes so that our pupils never really connected. It was the Catholic priest gaze. I couldn’t see into him nor did he look into me. One of his eyes was blue and the other was hazel. They did not align exactly. One was slightly turned in and that kept his gaze from being straight forward. This physical defect made it very easy to be with him. Perhaps because my mother was so critical, I did not like being looked at. When anyone looked at me I thought they were finding fault. So Leo’s gaze was restful. At the same time, I did enjoy the sexual pleasure of looking deeply into a man’s eyes. This could never happen with Leo not only because his eyes did not focus in that way, but also because he was too shy to burrow into anyone. This would be a loss for me. Now I realized that being with someone was a matter of agreeing to a series of losses. Him too. With me.
I worried that his being in Vietnam was just an excuse, that maybe he was a chronic unemployed person. As for living at home, maybe he was a mama’s boy and couldn’t leave home. But none of that seemed to matter. We laughed so much, we liked the same movies, we closed our eyes and listened to Brahms. Friends who had yet to meet him asked, what’s he like? What could I say? He makes funny gentle jokes? Like when we went to Sanders Theater to listen to chamber music, Leo turned in his seat and pretended to shout, “Is there a doctor in the house?” Everyone was a doctor! Or when we went to the opera to see Verdi’s Ottelo and he called out softly as we were applauding, “Author! Author!” When I told him I was worried about always writing about the same thing he said, “That’s like telling Cezanne enough with the apples already!” He touched me all the time, stood close to me, held my hand, played with me by flinging me around. He wasn’t like anything. We just got along. Still, we didn’t tell each other our last names. Perhaps we both felt that our last names would revea
l our backgrounds and our backgrounds might not be compatible. I thought he was a Wasp. His hair was brown and straight like the boys at Yale, he wore preppy clothes, and Christian boys seemed to be the ones who liked the military. I didn’t want him to know I was Jewish. I thought that would ruin everything.
After two months, we decided to tell. “You go first,” I said.
“No. Ladies first.”
“You.”
“You.”
“You, Brownie.”
“Brownie?”
“You have big brown eyes.”
“Okay. Adler. Sonya Adler.”
“You’re a Jewish girl?” he said with a Yiddish accent.
“Is that bad?”
“Better I should marry an Italian girl? I thought you were Italian. I thought I’d have to bring home a Catholic girl.”
“They wouldn’t like a Catholic girl?”
“No, they would not. They’re kosher.”
“You’re Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“You mean you’re a suburban Jewish kid just like me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you kosher?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to try lobster.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yes. But I don’t like ham.”
“Did you ever try it?”
“Yes. I don’t like it.”
“What about bacon?”
“I like bacon.”
“So, you mean you’re the boy next door?”
“Yes, Brownie. Seems to be turning out that way.” When he told me he loved me, something inside of me relaxed, as if an armistice was signed and I could go home.
Leo’s father was a dignified, affable man who swept Grandma Greenstone right off her little pumps, sat her down, and shared family history with her. He was accustomed to Lower East Side Jews, never knew there were Jewish pioneers in Texas and New Mexico, Jews like Grandma’s cousin who set up mercantile stores in dusty towns where the population was 350 and cowboys came into town after moving cattle to the freight cars. Leo’s father possessed the attribute Grandma prized above all others: he was tall. It was in her reverence for height that her immigrant past leaked out. At four years old, she probably couldn’t see that the men were small on the ship from Lithuania but she certainly could see as time went by that her father and uncles and even her chubby husband had to tip their heads back to look into the faces of the other Texans. When she met Leo, she said, “My, my, my. He is tall.” The children of our union, if all went well, would be tall Americans.
We were at Leo’s parents’ house in Brookline, a huge stone place built by a railroad tycoon with a carriage house in the back, a mansion on two acres that had been on the market for years because no one wanted to maintain it. Leo’s father bought it for almost nothing and was continually fixing it up in ways that the Old House Journal would have described as the “remuddling of the month.” The grand staircase was ripped out and never replaced. Guests sat at a kitchen counter like at a drug store soda fountain. The house maintained its grand quality despite the paintings on the wall that Leo’s father got at an auction, a bargain because one price got him about ten of them. My mother was sitting on a sofa talking to Leo’s mother, or rather smiling politely as Leo’s mother did her rapid-fire talk, talk, talk. We discovered at dinner that Leo’s family and mine were from the same village in Lithuania and that perhaps Leo and I were distant cousins.
I could tell my mother felt superior to everyone in the room. While she wore cashmere, Leo’s mother wore polyester. While she perhaps could lose a couple of pounds, Leo’s mother was downright fat. My mother was sitting there with her patient expression, now and then darting her eyes around the living room where she saw nothing beautiful and nothing of value. It was a painful contrast, the impressive exterior of the house with its porte couchere and massive front door, and the rather shabby furnishings bought by Leo’s father at the auctions that followed bankruptcies. He was proud of how little he spent on things. At that moment, for instance, he was trying to get rid of twelve barometers he bought when a nautical store in his shopping center went out of business. “Why did you buy all these?” Leo said when his father opened the bag and showed us.
“To give as presents.”
“You mean I can expect one of these for my birthday?”
“Sure. Tells you the weather. Guess how much I paid.”
“Can’t.”
“Guess.”
“A hundred dollars each.”
“No. Three dollars each.”
“Oh,” said Leo laughing, “no wonder you bought them!”
My mother said that I’d be bored with Leo in a year. All she saw was a lanky young man who did not try to charm her. Perhaps he made her feel old in the way that he didn’t respond at all when she said something cute, or turned her head in what she thought was an attractive way, or said coyly, “Thank you kind, sir,” when he held the door. He was more interested in the inside of things. Even I had no idea whether he thought I was pretty or not. “You were so lively,” he said about his first sight of me. If anything, Leo was suspicious of beautiful people because they were often conceited and conceit was a fault he abhorred. “Everyone,” he said, “has something to contribute.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes. Everyone.”
Joan’s fancy wedding was just a big show of nothing. Leo and I got married at a Justice of the Peace then jumped on a boat for Nantucket. When we landed, we realized we’d been too hasty, the result of being in a state of bliss. We’d forgotten to bring money. We found a motel and begged the owner to let us have a room for the measly amount we could pay. I told her we were just married and she took pity on us. As the sun was setting, we rode bikes into town and could see diners through the windows of a fancy restaurant that looked out at the ocean. We would go in and just order a salad. Next to us was a large table of robust vacationers enjoying lobsters, steamers, platters of vegetables, and baskets of rolls. When they left, their table was strewn with shells and crumpled white napkins and the remains of desserts. They did not finish their bottle of wine. Leo leaned back, grabbed the wine and put it on our table. Then we hid behind our menus. From the edge of our eyes we saw that a waiter had arrived and was standing next to our table in a formal uniform with a white napkin over his forearm. He waited for us to look up then said, “May I interest you in some wine … glasses?” He placed goblets in front of us and poured the wine.
We pedaled back to the motel. There was no door on the bathroom, just a curtain so I could hear Leo in there, could hear him pooping. This seemed more intimate than fucking. I didn’t know if hearing that would ruin everything. We had known each other six months, did have sex at my apartment. There was always an edge of shyness about it both for him and for me. Now he came out of the bathroom and smiled in a way that told me he wasn’t embarrassed at all about bathroom functions. “Your turn,” he said. I went in and turned on the water so he wouldn’t hear me peeing. Then I came out while he was cutting his toenails. “Done?” he said.
“We’re married,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’m married.”
“Yes, you are, Brownie. To me. You’re married to me and you can’t get out of it.”
“I could get out of it if I wanted to.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I wouldn’t let you.”
“How could you stop me?”
He got up from the edge of the bed and took me in his arms. “Now try to get out of it.” I struggled briefly. “See? Can’t be done. You’re mine and I’m yours. That’s all there is to it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I couldn’t figure out why I should give up my surname just because I was married. My mother-in-law said, “You take everything else from your husband, why not take his name?” I didn’t like to think of myself that way. It didn’t seem equal. My mother said I
was lucky to be married and should take my husband’s name as a sign of respect for his family. Why? Why didn’t he take my surname as a sign of respect for my family? I imagined myself in fifth grade sitting next to Leo or some other boy and suddenly when we grew up I had to change my name to his when once we were working on a project together with magic markers and Play-Doh.
Leo and I moved into the second floor of a two-family house on Crescent Street in Newton near the Mass Pike. When I went to register to vote, the matronly woman behind the counter said I had to register in my husband’s surname. I said that I wasn’t intending to use my husband’s surname and she said I had to. “It’s the law, dear.”
“What law?”
“Massachusetts law. A woman’s name changes automatically when she gets married.”
“Mine didn’t.”
“Were you married overseas?”
“In Massachusetts.
“And your husband’s name?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not going to use his name.”
“Don’t you want to vote, dear?”
“Yes. But in my own name.”
“My goodness me. This is interesting. Would you like to talk to the voting commissioner?”
I went into the small office of a pleasant man who smiled at me from behind his desk. When I told him what I wanted he said, “That’s not possible. A woman’s name changes automatically upon marriage.”
“Who says?”
“The law, I believe. Custom, anyway.”
“Mine didn’t change.”
“Yes, the bride’s surname automatically changes.”
“When? When does her own name drop off? When he puts the ring on her finger? When they sign the marriage license? When they say I Do and kiss? At what exact moment does she lose her name?”
“Ha! Ha! I never thought of it that way. Won’t you have a seat, Mrs …?
I sat down opposite him. “Sonya.”
“Here’s what you have to do, Sonya. If you want to use your maiden name, you have to go to probate court and change your married name back to your maiden name.”