It was like a pajama party at Charlton Street. By night, I played guitar and we sang and chattered. By day, Irona and Penny accompanied me on my quest for a wedding dress, which ended up being an old-fashioned ivory chiffon with tiny buttons running down the back. We had the Belgian lace from my grandmother’s gown made into a little wedding cap.
Two nights before the ceremony, I had my panic attack, a frequent ritual of brides-to-be. I had heard of some who ended their nights in strange places: crumpled up in a sloop at the Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin or hanging off a horse at the carousel in Central Park.
But I had Greg Jensen, who had been a surrogate father to me in London, to keep me in one place. An elegant writer, Greg was a tall, blasé man of few words and no nonsense. He could also be grumpy. Sensing that I was getting jittery, Irona plopped Greg, me, and two bottles of wine in my study tucked away in the top floor of the town house. She warned everyone to stay away.
We sat on either side of a futon I’d covered with madras. Greg, wearing one of the thrift shop shirts he favored, puffed on his pipe.
I sat cross-legged, facing him. “Sometimes I wonder whether marrying Bob is doomed to failure. I mean, like, I just idly wonder.”
“Why would that happen?” asked Greg. “You’ve succeeded in everything you’ve set out to do.”
I rolled my eyes. “Methuselah marrying Little Bo Peep?”
“A lot of people have done it before you.”
I filled our goblets again. “Mother would have admired Bob, but he wouldn’t have been in her plans for me. A nice Waspy businessman or a doctor from Wellesley, that’s what she wanted. You know how she was a social butterfly. She wanted me to ‘come out’ in the worst way. I finally agreed, and that thrilled her, and with her dying so young, I’m glad I did do the debutante thing. But it was ridiculous. Daddy had to wear a tux, and he did look so cute, but he had to bow to the queen of the ball, and I had to curtsy almost to the floor.
“She wanted me to do charity work, like the garden club, to knock the rough edges off me, and to her horror I not only volunteered but disappeared into a halfway house for students and mental patients!”
“Hmm. What were you, a student or a patient?” He emitted a belly laugh.
“Greg, I just love the way both you and Bob find only your own jokes hilarious.
“You remind me of my mother,” I continued. “Like when I was ten, she forced me to join the church choir. So we sang ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,’ which was such a beautiful hymn that apparently I began to sway to the music. She was furious; I had embarrassed her in front of the other mothers. I had loved choir practice, but I never went again.”
“Well, forget about your damn mother, will you?”
“You know, Greg,” I said, trying to enunciate my words crisply. Heat waves were radiating from his head, and he’d become blurry. Maybe I’d had too much to drink. “I’ve never once seen you without that pipe. I think it’s your pacifier.”
He glowered at me. “I thought this conversation was about you.”
“It is. You know, I worked really hard to get out from under all that haut monde stuff of my mother’s. Now I’m back onstage. And I don’t belong there. I’ll probably get in political fights at dinner parties with people like William F. Buckley who’ll never speak to him.”
Greg opened another bottle of wine. “So if you’re so unsuited to him, why didn’t you think of this before, instead of two days before your wedding?”
“I have thought about it! A lot. But love can destroy you. Look at Romeo and Juliet. They were perfectly happy—young, carefree—until they fell in love. Then they ended up dead.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, that story was made up.
“Tell me the reasons you shouldn’t marry Bob,” Greg said, tapping his pipe on the palm of his hand. “And I mean the real ones, not the superficial pap you’ve given me so far.”
“Greg, you’re like a father to me. So I have an important question.” I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “When men are old, can they still have sex?”
He gave me a withering stare and laid his blackened pipe beside him on the couch. “Look at Pablo Picasso, Charlie Chaplin…”
I sniffled. “If I’d only loved him, I could have married a young man, like Roger.” I knew Greg had disapproved of Roger.
“God help us,” he said, but before he could go on, I had fallen over, dead asleep on his pipe.
* * *
The day of my wedding, I was late. I couldn’t find my good panty hose; I was having a bad hair day; Irona crawled across the floor looking for my other wedding shoe. And finally, dressed and ready, I just sat on my bed, unable to move. Icy waves keep traveling down my left arm. “I think I’m having a heart attack,” I said to nobody in particular.
“No, no, it’s all nerves,” Irona said. “Just sit quietly a minute. Collect yourself.”
So I did. And then tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. My mother, the social butterfly, had won. I had been outmaneuvered. The roots of my childhood had come up like weeds to overwhelm me. My carefully constructed empire had been sacked—all my people, my privacy, my friendships with men, my rides on elephants, packing suitcases, taking trips, sitting on fire escapes, dancing naked on the roof, my walls, my floor, the nails in my floor, the capacious old shower, the only thing that knew the beauty of my crackling high Cs … I would give all of these things up, and though I might long for them, I would never get them back.
Just then Marina came in. “Time is up!” she announced, clapping. “Your father came up here, your sister came up here, all to see what was going on. I told them to go away, you were having a ‘private moment.’”
“I still am,” I replied as Irona finished dabbing my face with a cold washcloth and adding a little powder.
Marina threw my wedding cap across the bed and said, “Okay, I am going to go downstairs and tell the guests that the wedding is off.” She sashayed out the door, and I heard her thumping down the stairs.
I ran out after her to find that she hadn’t moved.
“I’m ready,” I told her. Of course I was ready. I had always been ready. It didn’t matter that this was a relationship that shouldn’t have happened; it had happened. Bob had given me joy where there was none, and all the rest was irrelevant. I was ready to go down to pledge my troth to him for the remainder of our days.
As we made our way downstairs to the parlor, we ran into our friend Susie Temkin, who took one look at Marina and gave her a Valium and a glass of vodka.
My sister, Penelope, the maid of honor, stood at the top of the wooden stairs, looking radiant with a flaxen bob and a rose-colored dress held up by one diagonal strap. She turned around and saw me. “At last, here comes the queen,” she quipped.
My father gave me his arm, and we started down the raw and slightly rickety wood stairs. I heard the chatter hush. My dress reached just below my toes, and I moved very slowly. Then, suddenly, my high heel caught in the gap between two slats and I was going down. My father, looking straight ahead, tensed his strong arm and swiftly lifted me back up, hopefully before anyone noticed.
It was chilly outside but snugly warm inside the tented garden, thanks to the space heaters Marina had thought to place around. As we reached the bottom of the stairs, we heard a little shriek: “My husband’s robes are on fire!” Sure enough, smoke was billowing from the back of the voluminous garments of Bob’s close friend Judge Sidney Asch, who stood at the end of the garden, ready to perform a combination Jewish and Episcopal ritual. He had backed up too close to a heater. Someone threw wine on the flames, which only intensified them, and then glasses of water were tossed until the last spark was extinguished, while the judge stood smiling, acting oblivious to the fuss.
My father waited until this interlude had concluded, then gave me a little nod, and I continued the fateful walk. The appropriate “aahs” rose from both sides as I walked down the aisle. I was too nervous to look anywhere but straight ahea
d, but I glimpsed the family up front. I was prepared to see them staring at their feet, unwilling to witness what they feared most. But Barbara, Annie, and her husband, Paul, all wore smiles on their faces. And then there was Bobby, standing next to his father, bearing the ring. To our surprise and pleasure, he had agreed to be Bob’s best man, and he looked handsome and proud. These glimpses calmed me, made my spirits rise so that I was ready for my beloved father to deliver me to the altar.
Bob looked pale, but when he saw me, his gaze was like light breaking through a haze. I looked back at my sister, and she looked back at me full of emotion. Everyone was happy. Everything was as it should be.
“Do you take Lucinda as your chosen wife?” the judge asked.
Bob did not answer, and I held my breath. He stared at me with a look of astonished admiration. The woman whom he remembered wore turtlenecks and men’s shirts. He gave me one of his rare ear-to-ear smiles. “I do,” he boomed.
And then, in a single moment, it was over. Two hours later, we licked wedding cake off our fingers, left two hundred people still dancing, and sneaked off to our suite at the United Nations Plaza Hotel. Our lives finally intertwined, we entered our room and immediately fell asleep.
* * *
“Hello, sweetheart,” I said with a yawn the next morning.
“I can’t find my left shoe,” he said sweetly.
We searched the room, and finally I pointed at the bathtub. “Well, what is it doing there?” he asked. “Did you hide it from me?”
I closed my eyes in mock disgust and had hardly opened them when I found myself inside the tub. I must admit I had never imagined that I’d be conducting my honeymoon rites in an empty porcelain Jacuzzi, but it was no less engrossing, given that I didn’t even feel the shoe that lay beneath me.
We took a short flight to Jacksonville and then a raft to Cumberland Island, a primitive landmass off the Georgia coast with soft sand beaches, wild horses, crumbling mansions, and bike trails through trees dripping with Spanish moss.
It was the kind of place we both loved. We found a stream with banks full of protruding oysters, and Bob promptly removed his shoes, climbed down the muddy sides, and filled his socks with them. It was a beautiful and horrifying sight, my hero, my new and forever husband, having used his bloody feet as a tool to bring me back this mountain of pearly-white oysters. That evening, we put them on a grill and, as they popped open, slurped them from their shells.
8
We returned home to Riverdale in late November, dreamy and besotted, to the aroma of Renia’s roast chicken and a blast of cold air. Bob wanted to see Barbara right away; he had missed her, and she came down the stairs with a little smile. He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the top of the head. I went to give her a hug, and she turned around and ran back up the stairs.
The big armchair in the living room sighed as I fell into it. Had I ever truly woken up to the fact that Bob and I had caused a huge, cataclysmic disaster for his children that might never be repaired? Of course they bitterly resented Bob and blamed me. I had already taken away half the love that their father had lavished on them, and now I was chipping away at the other 50 percent. I would leave them with nothing. Really nothing. To them, I was a vampire of fortune after their inheritance. They would never know me, know that I lived frugally, that I saw money as corrupting America. I would be Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up, only to have it roll down again.
After we returned from our honeymoon, I had to deal with the hundreds of gifts we had received. I sat buried in crystal decanters, silver tea strainers, odd abstract vases, meditating on the concept of wifedom. How was I supposed to be as Mrs. Morgenthau? What was I supposed to do?
A voice from the Great Mother in the Sky dictated that first I must write my thank-you notes. I’ve always hated writing thank-you notes. But I knew that this was what Martha would have done. And Martha, without ever being spoken of, only seemed to gather power in Bob’s home.
This was a hazard of marrying an older man and a widower. I was drawn both to identify myself with his late wife and to identify her with my own mother.
Martha found it regrettable that I didn’t take a broom and attack the dust on top of the door lintels, that I didn’t know a vacuum cleaner from a UFO, and that I didn’t dare enter the kitchen and make yet another subpar meal. Thank goodness for Renia: she made such good, wholesome food. If I hadn’t been in residence, his older girls, who were superior cooks, might have come and cooked him gourmet feasts.
Martha’s eyes seemed to follow me as I went from her living room to her dining room, up to her bedroom, to the queen bed that we bought to replace the twins, watching as I flipped up the half-drawn window shades to let in the light, judging me as I put away all of her pictures, replaced her throw pillows, plumped up my new ones. Nothing I did to change Riverdale really weakened her presence.
Her friends dropped in to take a peek at me, sometimes while I was writing thank-yous to them. A few found me refreshingly young and lively; others whispered that I could use a lesson in propriety: I hadn’t even visited the neighbors with gifts of homemade jam or place mats.
* * *
Easter 1978 came too soon. It had always been a glorious holiday in my home: the day of the Resurrection, when Christ rose from the dead and saved men from eternal suffering for their sins. “Christ has risen” were the first words our mother would say to us, whereupon Penny and I would reply, “He has risen indeed.” At church, I bowed before the big gold-gleaming cross and sat mesmerized by candles flickering everywhere. We wore new Easter bonnets and dined on paschal lamb, praying together around the table.
The Morgenthaus, on the other hand, had lost many of their own traditions—bar and bat mitzvahs with their big parties, Hanukkah candles and chocolate gelt and a present every day for the children. Their ancestors, the pioneer German Jews who emigrated in the late nineteenth century, dropped the trappings of their religion in order to be accepted into the culture of Christians, many of whom were anti-Semites. They kept their Jewish identity, however, building Reform synagogues, socializing with each other, celebrating major Jewish holidays such as Passover and Rosh Hashanah. They also added some Christian ones as well—but only the ritualistic parts. I had been trying to get Bob to go to an Episcopal service with me since we met, but he made one excuse after another. Then I learned that most Jews simply didn’t go into churches. In fact, after centuries of persecution by the Christian religious establishment, it was almost an insult to ask.
Even when Penny and I were teens, my Easter Bunny mother had hidden jelly beans, and wicker baskets full of goodies were waiting for us in the living room. So before the holiday, I asked Barbara if they’d like an egg hunt and a silly giant blown-up bunny. She looked at me blankly. Easter in its commercial jollity was clearly not a holiday that had made the cut.
I had been an unusually spiritual child. I talked to Jesus and loved him, so I wept at the thought of the pain he felt when nails were pounded into his hands and feet. Kneeling at the Communion rail, sometimes I felt a large hand resting softly on my head. For a time, I thought I’d be a nun. I also believed that the son of God would answer my most fervent prayer: that my parents would stop fighting and love each other. I stapled together books of construction paper promising that I would be incredibly good if only he would give me a real family. Sometimes, when I squeezed my eyes and prayed hard, to my delight, I would go floating out of my body. I thought I would meet God. Once, a blazing light did break through the dark, but it hurt my eyes and pulled me toward it; I guess I didn’t want to meet him after all, for I was afraid that when he came, he would come for me.
Time went by and the family deteriorated, each retreating into his or her separate room. By the time I was fourteen, I had lost interest in Jesus, who as a man-God knew my suffering and had refused to help. How naive I’d been.
Now, more than a decade later, I might have been an agnostic, but I still loved the Easter traditions. I woke in a
festive mood that day. We were at Riverdale with Barbara, and since she had declined the Easter Bunny, I gave her a little present. And I vowed that I would communicate my good spirits to Bob’s children, no matter what; you had to remember the essence of giving is not to expect anything back.
Bob was carving a fillet of beef, while I stayed in the hall to greet his older girls. When they arrived—dressed in flouncy skirts in contrast to my new, rather stiff spring suit—they walked by me as if I weren’t there. “Hello!” I said to the backs of their heads, but they passed on into the dining room, gathering around their father, advising him on how to carve the beef.
* * *
The brown sphere seems to be hurtling over the sun, arcing straight for my head. “Move back, move back!” I hear the shouts of the team. But I cannot move. Cannot bring my foot up to kick the ball. I cover my face, waiting for the horrible moment to come when this weapon will crush my skull. It smacks into my face and bounces away.
“Jeez Louise, you’re off the team,” yells the captain, a nasty boy named Shotsy Moore. I stick my tongue out at him and, reddened, stride over to the jungle gym. The tar is burning through my Keds; the steel bars are scorching. I’ll show them; I will climb up high and swing from bar to bar. I can do it! I will make them look at me with awe.
I climb the first rung but quickly get down. What if I hurt myself? No one will notice. They won’t even bother to laugh at me. Nobody dares talk to me, for nobody wants to be me. I am just invisible.
* * *
Bob put me at the other end of the dinner table, where the mistress of the house sits. They were quiet. What could they say to this interloper? If I had been a turtle, I would have pulled in my head. I too couldn’t think of a thing to say.
I cleared my throat. “I’ve never tasted Renia’s gravy before, it’s wonderful,” I said in a neutral voice.
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