Sherry gave Sara a musical mobile of fuzzy clowns that bobbed to the tune of “Send in the Clowns.” Someone kept pulling the ring and the plaintive song played itself out over and over again. My mother had crocheted an amazingly beautiful afghan for the baby, in brilliant primary colors. Sara cried out when she saw it, and then buried her face in its folds. Just when I was starting to get worried, she came up for air with a shimmering smile. And she actually laughed out loud at the mother-and-baby T-shirts I’d had inscribed: Born to Rock. Then she threw her arms around me, saying, “Thanks, Mrs. Flax, thanks for everything.” She still called me that, although I’d said it was too formal under the circumstances, that she could call me Paulie, or even Mom, if she liked.
There were duplicate gifts, of course: two sets of crib bumpers, three teddy bears, and two identical diaper bags. A couple of Sara’s friends had bought baby clothes in the wrong size for the intended season. It didn’t matter. We made an elaborate fuss over everything, even the greeting cards that Ann insisted on reading aloud as each gift was opened. “Welcome, little baby dear / You fill our hearts with hope and cheer.”
My own heart expanded and filled as I watched Sara being coaxed out of her funk, until she was almost her old winsome self again. We were an odd assortment of cheerleaders—three generations of women with clearly divergent lives. My friends and I were studiedly casual in our jeans and sweaters, and most of Sara’s friends were studiedly bizarre. One of them even had a completely shaved head. My mother clucked her tongue when she saw her, and whispered, “Oh, that poor girl.” But we all got along well together. We devoured the delicious pot-luck food, and drank the champagne punch in a series of suggestive toasts, punctuated by laughter and applause.
We were getting boisterous, the way women sometimes do when there aren’t any men around. Tony had been banished to the tennis courts for the afternoon, and husbands and lovers, like Spence and Nicholas, who’d dropped some of the women off, had been instructed not to come back until they were summoned. I thought of something I’d once read about Jane Austen, that she never had any conversations between men in her novels, unless there were women present, too, because she didn’t know what they said to one another when they were alone. Could men ever imagine this locker-room rowdiness among women? Even my mother joined in, in her own artless way, when she wasn’t thriftily rolling up the discarded ribbons for future use.
If Sara’s cold and proper mother had been there, the rest of us would have behaved properly, too. We would have been high-pitched and silly, rather than playfully crude. I’d called to invite her, for Sara’s sake, but a housekeeper had answered in an imperious voice and said that Mrs. Bartlett was unable to speak to me. I pictured a literal inability, her hand clutching her corded, constricted throat, through which no sound could pass. Sara’s sister, Peggy, came to the shower, though, an unofficial family ambassador, as she’d been at the failed wedding. Like Ann, she wore expensive, tailored clothes, and she was beautifully groomed. If you looked carefully, you could see her resemblance to Sara—the good cheekbones, the small, catlike family chin. The differences between them were mostly superficial, as if they were before-and-after models of the social revolution. I had a moment alone with Peggy in the kitchen, and I asked her what I could do to bring her parents around. She laughed, a sardonic little laugh, and said, “Nothing. You’d better forget it, Mrs. Flax—they don’t forgive and they don’t forget. If they knew I was here, they’d probably cut me off, too.”
“But Sara needs them so badly now,” I said. “And it’s their grandchild, too, whether they like it or not.”
“They don’t like it,” Peggy said. “And they’ll never acknowledge it, either.” She hesitated, and then added quietly, “You have to understand … it’s a matter of class. Jason wasn’t ever good enough for Sara. And now, well, now Sara’s not good enough for us, either.”
“Are they both like that?” I asked, throbbing with the insult.
“Yes. No. Mother is really the hard one, but Dad’s her slave.”
“Jason sent Sara some money,” I said.
Peggy nodded. “I know, she told me,” she said, and I was ashamed of offering such feeble evidence in his favor.
“I’m going to call your parents again,” I said stubbornly. “For Sara’s sake. Or I’ll write them a letter.”
“It won’t help,” Peggy assured me, and then we went inside together, carrying platters of cake.
The party had grown even louder and merrier in our brief absence. Katherine was playing the piano for Sherry and Ann, who were singing a medley of show tunes, off-key, like a couple of drunks in a cocktail lounge. When they were finished, someone began urging Sara to sing something. She hadn’t worked for a while, and Ann had told me she never sang around the house, not even in the shower. Now she was saying, “No, I can’t. Come on, stop it,” as a few of her friends gently shoved her closer to the piano. It reminded me of people pushing a stalled car along, hoping the engine would catch once it was in motion. Katherine played a grand flourish on the piano and Sara leaned toward her and whispered something. Katherine shook her head, repeating the flourish, and then there was further whispering and another, faltering flourish. Finally, one of Sara’s friends replaced Katherine at the piano and began to plunk something out. And Sara began to sing. I’d forgotten the special rusty, husky urgency of her voice. She sang a song I’d never heard before, something weird about someone being ready to be baked. The words pulsed from her in a steady, thrilling rhythm, though, and I realized that popular songs are always about the same thing, no matter how they’re disguised. As Sara sang, I looked around the room at the faces of the listening women. They seemed to be shining with accord: yes, life is difficult, with its swift peaks of pleasure, its swooping dives into despair; and yes, love is impossible, but we willingly waste our hearts, our energy, our entire glorious potential on it. Sara belted out the chorus of her song like a battle cry to action, and I felt a rush of camaraderie, of sisterhood. How terrific we were, rallying around one of our own like this, how remarkably loving and loyal. I forgot my initial annoyance with Sara for getting herself into this mess, my recent discord with La Rae, and even my lifelong disagreement with my mother on almost everything that mattered. I knew that the Styrofoam stork was only an ironic symbol, not a foolish denial, of the facts of life. I had a dreamy vision then of a society without men, of only self-sufficient females. It certainly wasn’t a very original idea, but I imagined we could live without men if we really tried to, if we wanted to. We didn’t have to be their adversaries, like the Amazons, only separate. I wasn’t thinking of war, but of a conditional peace. The worst condition would be the denial of longing for their otherness, for the scrape of beard, the gorgeous shock of penetration. But I supposed we’d get over that sooner or later. Phil Spitalny’s All-Girl Orchestra, without Phil. It wouldn’t simply be an extended hen party, either. We would work together and quarrel among ourselves, the way we did now with men, but without the threat of domination or loss. “Put me in cold, I’m ready to bake today!” Sara sang, and we all moved our feet and shoulders in time to the hypnotic beat.
When the party was over, when we were gathering the gifts into a tidy pile, and cleaning up the crumbs and empty glasses, my exhilaration slowly ebbed. Some of the women used the telephone, and in a while the men began showing up. Tony, that exemplary husband among husbands, came in carrying his tennis racket in one hand and flowers for Katherine in the other. They kissed—heartily, sexily—while I watched with the awe of a movie audience watching screen lovers kiss.
Tony hugged each of us in turn, and his sweater was rough and sweet-smelling from the fresh air. It was that time of day when the natural light begins to fade and families draw together into little constellations. It reminded me of winter evenings in the Queens apartment, waiting for Howard to come home. The windows would grow dark and steamy, and when I rubbed a space clear to look out, all I could see were the lighted windows of other apartments. The child
ren and I were often locked up together for days because of the weather or somebody’s earache, and we were all a little crazy by the time Howard appeared at last, the romantic relief in our domestic drama. I used to inhale that same smell of the outdoors, of freedom, that he brought in with him, as if it would make me high. It did make me high, and the deep, mellow tone of his voice, after the children’s strident whining and the strident noise of the TV, was music I couldn’t get enough of. I must have been envious of him then, and even resentful, but now I simply remembered the joy of reunion, of welcoming him back among us. The way the other women at the shower welcomed their returning men.
Spence came in, and later Nicholas arrived for Sherry. The men and women were a little shy together, but also excited, as if they’d been separated for a long time, against their will. Their voices mingled in pleasant cacophony—flutes and bass fiddles—like a symphony orchestra tuning up. Then they began leaving, two by two. I hadn’t asked Bernie to come for me—it was too close to home, my old home, for me to feel comfortable there with him. And I didn’t want to subject him to the once-over he’d surely get from my friends. But I couldn’t help thinking how much they would like him, and how they would envy me. I felt bereft as the party ended, a wallflower at the senior prom, even though several of the women drove happily away by themselves, and Sara and my mother were also unclaimed, except by Spence. Some of us could live without men—we had already proven that—but I knew that I didn’t want to. Given my freedom of choice, I would always choose the dangers of integration and contention, the blood-curdling risk of their love.
32
LOOKING FOR JASON CONTINUED to be a dead end, and after hanging around the rock clubs for a while, I began to think about playing my sax again. I had hardly touched it lately and I didn’t even listen to my tapes much anymore. I wasn’t exactly inspired by the music Jason’s friends played, but you could hear the strains of jazz history in it, if you listened hard enough, and I realized how much I missed my own music.
A few weeks after Gil died, one of the men in his group, the bass-playing dentist, called a couple of times to ask if I wanted to sit in with him and the pianist. I always had some excuse handy—I was busy, tired, under the weather—and I promised to get back to him, but I never did. Not playing was a kind of mourning, I suppose, for Gil, for my marriage, for Jason. I thought of how Orthodox Jews are forbidden to listen to music, go to the movies, or watch television for at least a month after a death in the family. Some even hold out for a whole year. I think the idea is not to interrupt the grieving with entertainment, because it only prolongs the agony. Sooner or later you have to serve the whole sentence. After Paulie’s father died, her mother stopped watching her favorite soaps for such a long time she lost track of the characters. Later, she was surprised to find out that some of them had died, too, knocked off by the networks during her period of mourning. And yet, as she would be the first to say, life goes on—and now music invaded my head, pushing out some of those troubling thoughts. As I drove to work, I found myself tapping out a lively tempo on the steering wheel and singing little riffs under my breath. Finally, I called Irv Jacoby, the dentist, and asked if he and his pianist wanted to get together at my place that Friday night. Gil must have told him about Paulie and me because he said, with obvious discomfort, that Fridays were kind of a family night for him, and would Wednesday be okay instead? The sad truth was that I was free almost any night, and I said sure, that was fine with me.
I left the studio early on Wednesday afternoon and went to the liquor store and the supermarket. When I got home, I looked around the house, the way you do when visitors are coming, to see if it’s presentable. I examined the spot that was wearing down on the left sofa arm, and ran my fingers up a fine jagged crack in the wall that came from the house settling. Paulie had been after me to sell the house, so we’d have the money to provide a home for Sara and the baby. I’d told her to look for a rental for them, and that I’d pay most of the rent. She and Sara found something only a few days later. It was a small one-bedroom, with a convertible dining area, in a new building near Union Square. Now they were busy fixing it up and sending me the bills. It was going to cost an arm and a leg, but I’d manage it, even if I had to take out a second mortgage on this place.
Paulie could also have the lion’s share of our savings in the divorce settlement, to make up for her share of the house. And I’d will the whole thing to her, anyway, no matter what happened between us. It wasn’t that I was so sentimental about it. I was used to living there, though, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, with the light coming in through the windows at a different angle. And during the night, I could find my way to the bathroom and back to bed without ever opening my eyes. I sat on the sofa, my elbow covering the worn spot, and wondered, as I often did, what Paulie was doing at that moment. I had never seen her apartment and didn’t really want to, didn’t want to set the images I had of her and her lover in an actual, known place.
I got up and plumped the pillows, wiped some dust from the coffee table with my handkerchief. Shadow sensed that we were having company, and he perked up as I puttered around, sniffing at the dish of peanuts I set out, following me from room to room. But when I took my sax out and began to blow, about a half hour before the other men were expected, he gave me a mournful look and padded back to the kitchen. The sound always hurt his sensitive ears, and this time it hurt mine, also. In a matter of weeks, I seemed to have lost most of the polish and confidence I’d gained with all that recent practice.
Irv and the pianist, Marco, arrived together in Irv’s station wagon. I hadn’t seen either of them since Gil’s funeral, when we’d stood around, empty-handed and solemn in our dark suits. Now, like me, they were dressed casually and eager to get started. We set up in the den, and in a few minutes we were jamming again. Nobody had said anything about Gil—what was there to say? Instead, we’d made small talk about the weather, music, the latest White House mess. I’d apologized in advance for being rusty, and they were both quick to assure me they sounded rotten themselves. They didn’t, though, and to my surprise, neither did I, once we really got going. “Hey, not bad, kids,” Irv said, modestly, when we took our first break.
I brought out the Scotch and ice and passed the peanuts and some cheese around. Still, none of us mentioned Gil. I’d been having a lot of dental work lately, and I asked Irv if he could recommend a good root-canal specialist who wasn’t a highway robber. He insisted on pulling me over to the desk lamp to take a look at my mouth before he wrote down a couple of names for me.
Marco was a younger guy who had recently married and moved from Queens to Northport. He kept grilling me about Port Washington, asking how high the taxes were, if the schools were any good, and if the sewers were in yet and paid for. He wanted to know if my basement was as damp as his, and we all tramped downstairs so I could show him the dehumidifier. I explained how it worked and that the humidistat was its essential feature. Once we were down there, Marco looked over the furnace, and the water heater, too, as if he were a plumber and this was a service call. Irv stood under one of the tiny, darkened windows with his hands in his pockets and remarked, almost to himself, that he needed a new set of plastic well covers at his place. The basement had never seemed so eerie before, like a cave in which our separate voices echoed and dwindled. In the dim corners I saw the shapes and shadows of things we stored there during the winter: the barbecue, the lawn chairs, the carton with the string of Japanese lanterns we’d always used for outdoor parties. “Well, let’s get back to work,” I said. Marco lingered briefly at the water heater before he followed Irv and me upstairs to the den.
We did a whole set of Mingus next, including “Celia” and “Diane”—Marco’s wife’s name was Diane. And then we went right into “Sentimental You,” in which I took the long, melodic solo with just the right blend of cool and schmaltz. We got high on how good we sounded, and we began making plans to meet again, to meet regularly at someone’s hous
e at least twice a month. In the middle of that happy rush, I could practically hear Paulie saying “Is this how you’re looking for Jason?” just as I used to fix on dying right after making love, and it brought me down in the same fast, heart-stopping way. But I had to live, didn’t I?
After that, we noodled around for a while, playing a few bars of this and that, and then we broke into some slow but joyful Dixieland. We ended with an aching version of “Jazz Me Blues,” a number the marching bands in New Orleans play in funeral processions. When we finished, Irv mopped the sweat and the tears from his broad, reddened face. “Well, that’s it for me, fellas,” he said, drooping forward with his arms around his bass.
“Yeah, me too,” Marco agreed, and he went into the bedroom to call his wife.
I wanted to say something to Irv about Gil, to formalize what wound up being a kind of musical service for him, but I didn’t, and by the time Marco came back the mood was gone, the thing was over.
33
Dear Stuck-up,
You can remove that chewing gum from your hair with ordinary cold cream. Pull it through the affected strands with a dry cloth or towel. If that doesn’t work, try freezing the hair with ice cubes—the gum will peel right off!
Dear Off-Your-Rocker,
Avoid scratches on your wood floors by using floor wax on the rocker arcs. And pick up that sagging cane seat by bathing it in hot water and setting it out in the sun to dry.
Dear Dog-Daze,
Try vacuuming Fido instead of the sofa. Use one of those handy little battery-operated car vacuums. Speak soothingly to the dog until he gets used to the noise, or use it around him on the furniture before you use it on him.
Dear Scout Leader,
Store all those marshmallows in the freezer and just snip them apart with scissors before the next campfire!
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