The Tell

by Linda I. Meyers

  “Next Saturday night, eight o’clock,” he said. “Wear sneakers.”

  By Saturday night I was so excited, I couldn’t sit still. I made sure to dress simply—blue jeans with a denim shirt tied at the waist, and sneakers—and to let my hair hang straight and loose. Ralph smiled when he saw me, so I guess I fit the bill. I raised a finger to tell him to wait a minute. I ran into the concession to give Grandma a kiss good bye. She couldn’t come out from behind the counter because she was busy making an egg cream for Selma’s husband, Herbie.

  “Have a good time, mameleh,” she said, “and don’t be too late.”

  “Maybe it’s too late already,” Herbie said with a sleaze-ball laugh.

  I gave him a dirty look and ran out to the car.

  I waved goodbye to Selma and the other yentas who were craning their necks to see into the car. He was driving his older brother’s ’56 Chevy. It was red with cream-colored leather seats. I was going to ask how his brother could afford such a nice car, but I didn’t want to be nosey. Ralph rolled down the windows with an automatic button on his side of the car. My hair blew in the wind.

  Ralph held my hand as we drove, his middle finger occasionally stroking my palm. I lifted his hand and ran my tongue over his knuckles. He tasted like salt and smelled like soap.

  We drove through Monticello and then up a narrow country road. When it turned to dirt, he pulled the car over and helped me out. We walked along the edge until he found a small opening in the brush. It was the trail that led to the top of the mountain. His favorite place. We began the ascent. The trail was narrow and rocky. At times, the branches of the trees formed a canopy, blocking out what little light came from the sliver of moon. Such darkness. Ralph held my forearm, steering me as if he were pulling a little red wagon. He pointed to the ground whenever a tree root threatened to trip me. I loved him.

  When we got to the top, the sky opened like a curtain on a celestial stage. The stars were white flowers appliquéd with silver thread on a black velvet sky. I was in heaven.

  The night was cool. The air smelled like pine. It was like being in a dream, a really good dream. Ralph directed my gaze to the Big Dipper, as he unbuttoned my blouse and helped me off with my jeans. The bra went. The panties too. I’d never been naked with a boy before. Never been naked outside, either. I climbed off the rock and ran in wide circles with my arms out, feeling the breeze kiss my skin. Ralph laughed. He had taken off his shirt but he still had on his shorts. Was it my imagination or was the moonlight glinting off his beautiful chest? When he got naked, I couldn’t help but stare. I tried to act casual, but I wanted to examine every part of him. He was beautiful all over.

  “Watch out,” he said as I spun around, “There’s a nunnery on that other hilltop. Stay out of the moonlight.”

  Even the mention of nuns, church, religion, didn’t faze me.

  When I came back to the rock, he slipped his shirt around my shoulders to keep me warm and began to kiss me deep and caress my thighs.

  “I need to ask you something,” he said. “Are you a virgin?”

  I thought about what he was asking and I was confused.

  “Do you mean have I ever done anything or have I never done everything?”

  My hesitation and confusion was all the answer he needed. He stopped touching me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly shivering.

  “I don’t sleep with virgins,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked. I was relieved but mostly disappointed. “I have to lose my virginity with someone, and I’d like it to be you,” I said.

  “Too much responsibility,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek.

  “There are other things we can do,” I said, thinking of Phyllis.

  I pushed him back down on the rock. I slid down to where his hair began to tickle my face. I had decided to do it. I wished that I had asked Phyllis for a better description—more direction. I was scared and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I fumbled around. I felt Ralph’s excitement wane. He gently lifted my head.

  “Get dressed. Let’s go,” he said.

  I didn’t know if I’d just been rejected or respected. His desire snagged on a technicality. Climbing down the mountain, I felt awful. I felt sick.

  When he dropped me off at Sader’s, he gave me a peck on the lips and a pat on the back. “That was fun,” he said, and smiled, but I didn’t believe him for one second.

  It was two weeks until the end of the summer. I moped around, not knowing what to do with myself. I didn’t even bother going down to the pond. What was the point? I’d even stopped listening for the phone. He wasn’t going to call. It was over.

  Grandma felt sorry for me. She kept making up jobs for me to do so I’d keep busy. She even got the yentas to teach me mahjong. That actually distracted me for a while, but they played a fast game, and I was too slow. I decided I was too slow at everything. Phyllis had been telling me that all through junior year. Had I listened to Phyllis, I could have taken my sweater off and had sex with Ezra Cohen, and then I wouldn’t have been a virgin, and then maybe Ralph would have been willing to schlep to Brooklyn the way Shelly schlepped to the mountains.

  I saw Ralph one more time over the Labor Day weekend. I wanted to see him alone, but Phyllis and Shelly had planned for the four of us to have an end-of-the-summer bash. He seemed happy to see me. He gave me the usual peck on the cheek, but he didn’t take my hand when we were driving. We went back to the diner, and this time Phyllis told me to pick the song. I played Sinatra singing “Moonlight in Vermont.” I felt a little better when I saw Ralph smile.

  Back in Brooklyn, all was silent. Not a word. Month after month, I kept calling him. His mother always answered sweetly and in a Yiddish accent said, “I’m sorry, dahling, but my Ralphie isn’t home. What can I tell you? You want I should tell him that you called again?”

  I gave a sheepish “No, thank you,” and went back to bed. I had bought the forty-five single of Little Anthony and the Imperials singing “Tears on My Pillow.” I played it over and over. Phyllis said I was pathetic and I should get up and get over it. The whole senior year passed this way. Guys asked me out but they were either greasers or nerds. The guy I wanted was in the Bronx, not in Brooklyn.

  I didn’t want to go to the senior prom. I wasn’t in the mood, but Phyllis said I had to go because she didn’t want to go alone. I said, “I thought you were going with Shelly.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  She fixed me up with this guy, Elliot. There was nothing attractive about Elliot. In the pictures my mother took, I’m sitting on the couch with my dress spread out around me. I look like an orange lampshade without the tassels. The dress is taffeta, strapless, with a matching orange orchid wristlet. The smile is fake. Elliot is standing behind me with both hands gripping my shoulders. Too tightly. His tuxedo is blue with black lapels. He smiles wide, showing all the braces on his teeth.

  My mother finally stopped with the photo shoot, and we went to the prom. Elliot hovered around, waiting for me to want to dance. Shelly was stationed at the food table. Phyllis and I sat in a huddle, nastily gossiping about everybody’s dresses. There was a fanfare. We looked up, and in came Susie, the queen of the prom, on a paper-mache float. The float was silver and gold; her dress was fluffy white chiffon. She looks like Glinda the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz. She’s even waving a wand. We decided we loved the dress.

  Just before I graduated, my father had announced that he was having a situation, and there was no money for the rent, much less college tuition. My mother and I, my father, and our collie dog with colitis all piled into Grandma’s one-bedroom apartment. It was smaller than the bungalow at Sader’s. I had to get out of there. If I couldn’t go to college, then I’d have to figure another way out.

  I got a job working for Century of Boston, a women’s sportswear house that specialized in sweater sets and four-gore skirts. Century was located at 1407 Broadway, the heart of the garment district. It was a scene in th
e lobby. Salesmen and buyers in pinstripe suits, star sapphire pinky rings, and sunglasses stood around reading Women’s Wear Daily and trying to look like they mattered. The secretaries and showroom girls clicked by in their high-heeled shoes, smiled prettily, and for a moment, made them think that they did. I got hired on as a showroom model and receptionist. I was five foot eight inches tall with long, thin legs. I had taken Ralph’s advice and stopped teasing my hair. It hung loose onto my shoulders. I was too naïve to know that it was my looks and not my intelligence that got me the job.

  When I was the receptionist, I sat at a desk behind a sliding glass window, fielding come-ons from textile salesmen trying to get in to see the designer. When I was a model, I slinked around the showroom trying to look like Suzy Parker and make the garments hang right for the buyers. The job paid seventy-five dollars a week and had the kind of glamour that impresses an eighteen-year-old girl only two generations away from a tenement on the Lower East Side.

  Every morning I stood on the El, waiting for the train to take me out of Brooklyn. I came alive when I climbed the subway steps onto Broadway. If I couldn’t be a college coed, then I’d be a New York City career girl. One night when I came home and everyone was in their usual places—Grandma at the kitchen sink, my mother smoking a cigarette and stewing at the kitchen table, and my father nowhere to be seen—I said I had an announcement.

  “I have good news. You’ll soon have more room here.”

  “Why? Are you planning to kill the dog?” my mother said, with only half a smile.

  “Very funny. I’ve decided to move to New York City. It’s closer to work. Maybe I’ll even be able to take some classes at night at CCNY.”

  “Over my dead body,” was all my mother said, looking to Grandma for support.

  “Mameleh,” said Grandma, “nice girls don’t leave home until they get married.

  “You did,” I whined. “You were only fourteen when you left the shtetl and moved to New York.”

  “So you’re also running from the Cossacks?” my mother asked.

  I looked at her with a nasty remark at the tip of my tongue but thought better of it and kept my mouth shut. I could defy my mother, but Grandma was my heart. The only thing less appealing than getting married was to continue living with my meshuganah family. I called my friend Howard.

  I thought Howard was a good guy. I’d met him when I was fifteen and we moved onto the same block. We used to stand on the corner and sing doo-wop together. The whole senior year, Howard listened to me moan about Ralph. I’d lie with my head on his lap, and he’d stroke my hair and tell me how the guy was an ass and didn’t deserve me. I knew that Howard had always wanted to stroke more than my hair, and, when I proposed marriage, he said yes. I was eighteen; he was twenty.

  We had more harmony singing doo-wop together than we had as a couple. The Ladies Home Journal said passion would come. I knew what passion felt like, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to wait. Phyllis told me that there was no room for Howard because I wasn’t over Ralph.

  “Call him,” she urged.

  “What am I supposed to say? ‘I’m engaged to be married, but all I think about is you?’”

  “Exactly,” she answered.

  I finally gave in and took her advice. It had been a couple years since I’d called his house, and this time Ralph came to the phone.

  “I need to see you,” I said. “I am about to get married, and I have to be sure I’m not making a mistake.”

  He said he’d meet me Thursday night in the lobby of the Hotel New Yorker.

  I changed my outfit six times that morning. I would have kept changing, but I had to get to work. I knew to keep it simple, so I settled on a navy skirt, white, man-tailored blouse, and a pair of black pumps. The day at the office dragged like no other. I’d tried to be a little late for our rendezvous so I wouldn’t be the one standing around in the lobby, but I came early and I was the one standing around—my eyes fixated on the revolving door. I must’ve watched a hundred people come through, carrying their luggage. Not one person was Ralph.

  I hadn’t forgotten how handsome he was, but I was still floored when I saw him. It was October, and he still had a summer tan. I’d never seen him in a suit before. Ralph looked like a man out of another time and place, a very tasteful and fashionable one. He worked in the rag business, too, but he looked like royalty. He wore a navy sport jacket with a yellow plaid vest and a pocket watch. What am I going to do? I thought. I still love this guy.

  He gave me a big smile and a warm hello. He seemed glad to see me, but I couldn’t tell how much.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

  “To the rock?” I said teasingly.

  “Okay,” he said. “Why not? I’ve got my car.”

  “Really? But we’re not dressed for the country.”

  “So what,” he said. “Be adventurous.”

  My excitement soared. I made arrangements to stay over at a coworker’s house, called my mother, and gave her an excuse. “Stuck in the office,” I said. “Staying over at Dillys’s house. Don’t wait up,” Ralph put his arm around me and led me to the car. I pictured us on the rock. I was still a virgin of sorts, doing the good girl thing, waiting until after we were married, but this time, when Ralph asked, I fully intended to lie.

  On the drive, we talked about Phyllis and Shelly’s breakup. He said Shelly was pretty upset. Phyllis told me that if Ralph asked I should tell him that she was upset too, even though she was dating up a storm. She wanted to see if Shelly would swallow his pride and call her again.

  Ralph wanted to know everything about Century of Boston. What was their fall line like? Were they doing purples? Reds? What did I think of the designer?

  “So why did you want to see me?” he finally asked.

  “Oh,” I said, “bridal jitters. Why did you agree to see me?”

  “Curiosity,” he said, smiling, “and I have some things to tell you, but they can wait until we get to the rock.” This just fed my excitement. Was he going to tell me how much he’d missed me? Was he so glad that I had called?

  In anticipation of our time at the rock, we were quiet for the rest of the drive. The radio played Margaret Whiting, Tony Bennett, and Sinatra, and Ralph hummed along. I drummed my fingers on the seat, wishing I could call Phyllis.

  We parked the car off to the side of the road. Ralph took my hand and we started the climb. The October air was crisp. The reds and golds of the leaves reflected in the moonlight. It must have rained earlier in the day, because the path was soggy and slippery underfoot. My ankles kept turning in my pumps.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. Fine,” I lied.

  By now I was even more convinced that he would tell me something wonderful; otherwise why would we be schlepping up this boggy trail?

  When we got to the top. I took off my shoes and he helped me up onto the rock. The sky was a panorama of stars. I looked up at him and waited for a kiss, but nothing happened. He looked at me with a shy smile. I began to deflate like a balloon after the party.

  “What did you want to tell me?” I whispered.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asked with excitement.

  “For what?”

  “There are three things,” he said. “First, I’m changing my name from Lifshitz to Lauren; second, I’m going to make a million dollars; and third, I’m getting engaged to Susie.

  “Susie who?” I asked.

  “You know Susie. Your prom queen.”

  The first two were easy to believe, but the third was unfathomable. A vision of her as Glinda the Good Witch flashed through my brain, and I wanted to stab her with that goddamn wand.

  “Since when does the Bronx go to Brooklyn?” was all I could manage to say.

  My decision was made: I came down off the mountain and married Howard. In 1971, I ran into Susie at the pediatrician’s office. I was there with my little boy; she was there with her little girl. By then, Ralph Lauren had won the Coty a
ward for best menswear designer. I told Susie, in case she hadn’t seen his ads, that the female model he used looked just like her. Long hair. Freckled nose. No pretense. Susie said she and Ralph had indeed gotten engaged, but she’d broken it off. The little girl with the runny nose was not his kid. She said that every time he’d pick her up for a date, he’d rearrange her clothes and adjust her bobby socks.

  “It made me crazy, so I told him to take a hike,” she said.

  So what if he fixed your bobby socks? I thought. That seemed like a lame reason to break it off. He could have dressed me however he wanted, or, even better, undressed me whenever he wanted.

  Thoughts of Ralph never left me. The more famous he became, the harder it was to keep him out of my mind. His fashions were in every store, his portrait in every magazine. My love had faded, but the memories of the passion I’d felt with him had not. The Ladies Home Journal was wrong; after twelve years of marriage, the passion with Howard never came. Had it not been for that summer with Ralph Lifshitz, I might never have known the excitement I could feel with a man.

  My Wedding (1961)

  a photo left out in the sun

  It is three in the morning. I am sitting at the desk in the living room of our new apartment with only a desk lamp to light the playing cards. The cartons, still unpacked, are stacked around me, awaiting our attention. A painting of a sunset—a memory of a weekend together in Provincetown, Rhode Island—leans against the wall. The baby kicks in my belly. I rub the spot—sure it’s a little foot. I wonder if the baby is getting too big for its space and actively looking for a way out.

  Howard has locked me out of our bedroom. I knocked and banged on the door, asked for an explanation, asked if he needed help. I cried and asked him to please let me in.

  “Go away,” is all he says, a strange voice expressing a mood I can’t name. We have only been married for three years, but I’m already worried that I have married a crazy man.