“Are you sick?” I ask. “You have one hour to open this door, and then I am going to call the police.”
Silence.
“What am I supposed to do, Howard? I’m tired. Open the fucking door.”
I go back to the desk, deal out the cards and methodically put heart on heart and spade on spade. I recall my mother playing solitaire into the wee hours while waiting for my father to come home from yet another night out. I’d lie in my bed, hearing the shuffle of the cards, the bang on the table to even the deck—the flick of the Zippo lighting one cigarette after another.
Maybe I should have seen this coming. Today Howard did what he used to do when he lived at home with his parents—compulsively climbed up and down the outside steps, entering the house, checking to be sure he’d shut the burner on the stove. I counted—twelve times he went up and down the steps before he was satisfied that the house was safe, and he was free to leave.
I’m thinking now that my life has always been filled with crazy people.
The police tell me Kings County Hospital has a psychiatrist who makes house calls.
“At four in the morning?” I ask.
“Particularly at four in the morning,” the dispatcher says.
Do I call? Don’t I call? I imagine the doctor coming to the door, and I’m embarrassed, as if, somehow, I have caused this debacle. I go into the kitchen and put the kettle on, thinking that I can calm myself with a cup of tea. By the time the whistle blows, I know what has to be done—I reach for the phone.
“Howard, a doctor is coming. A psychiatrist.”
“When?”
I can tell he is right next to the door. I can see the shadow of his feet.
“They didn’t say. As soon as he can come, he will be here. Why don’t you let me in and then we can end this and both go to sleep.”
“No,” he says. I see his shadow move away from the door. I am tired of solitaire. I imagine the roving shrink, sitting in his car somewhere in Brooklyn, hearing the cackle of a call on the intercom and revving the engine to rush to the scene. The baby, affected by my distress, is kicking hard. My lower back hurts. I pace the floor, weaving between the cartons. The one marked PHOTOGRAPHS grabs my attention.
At the top of the carton is a small plastic book with a white spiral binding containing Polaroids of our wedding taken by my maid of honor, Phyllis—helping us out, saving us money by being our photographer. I will discover in the years to come that Polaroid pictures fade with age, but this night, only three years into our married life, the photos, like the memories, are still sharp. I begin leafing through the pictures, trying to distract myself while waiting for the doctor.
The cover of the album says, “December 24, 1961: our Emily Post Wedding.”
The first picture that came to mind was in my memory, not the album. It had snowed the night before. I recall hiking up the train of my gown and holding my pumps in my hand—better to have frozen feet then ruin the shoes—and climbing over the mound of snow that blocked the path to the door of the temple.
In the photos, I am wearing a white satin gown. The bejeweled bodice dips to a point at the waist, and the skirt fans out into a long train. On my head is a pearl crown meant to give a queenly touch, but, when removed, it left little red puncture wounds like a crown of thorns across my brow.
The inspiration for my royal wedding was a single weekend at my friend Dillys’s apartment. Dillys, a coworker at Century of Boston, was smart and soft-spoken and the only one of our office staff able to keep our boss and the owner’s son in check. Alan the Arrogant, as we called him, was a pain in the ass, but Dillys managed him with such charm and self-assurance that he was oblivious to her manipulations.
Because we were all crammed into Grandma’s apartment, I was delighted when Dillys invited me to spend the weekend with her. Her husband, Peter, was off training with the ROTC—I had no idea what the ROTC was. I asked; she explained, but it didn’t stick, and it became a subject to ignore.
Dillys and Peter lived on the second floor of a brown-stone in another part of Brooklyn known as the Heights. The neighborhood was so different from Brownsville that it was like a different city. The tree-lined streets were clean and open. I was most impressed by the quiet. It was five thirty in the evening on a warm fall day, and there were no children playing stickball on the street, and no mothers screaming out the window, calling them in for dinner.
Walking into Dillys’s apartment was like walking onto the set of The Philadelphia Story. It had a gracious simplicity, seemingly achieved without effort—the sleek lines of a Maurice Villency Danish teakwood dining room table and chairs, two sterling silver candlesticks, each with a tapered beeswax candle, flanking a crystal bowl. Dillys served me wine out of Waterford glasses and dinner on gold-rimmed Lenox china. Her tchotchkes, as my mother would unwittingly call them, were spare—not ceramic mementoes from Coney Island outings, but Steuben glass animals and fruit neatly placed on the sideboard. Dillys’s family pictures were not tin-typed and faded, or headshots taken in a photo booth, but painted portraits hung on the living room wall. I slept between monogrammed sheets and awoke to WQXR playing classical music, but what I found to be most impressive were the floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with books. Had Dillys read all these books, or was Peter the reader? I asked, but she just smiled.
Dillys was happy to play Pygmalion, educating the underclass. Had I known the word, I would have labeled my behavior and all the questions I asked gauche, but my concern for showing my ignorance was less important than learning the names of all that I saw.
In the same way I studied Dillys’ apartment, I studied her manner and her dress. Later in my life, I would decide that her style was actually no style—a generic distillation that said little about the individual—but back then, I thought shirtwaist dresses, scarves carefully tied at the neck, and little gold butterflies pinned on the shoulder of cashmere sweater sets were exactly the look to achieve. If I saved, I could afford the sweater set, but the pin was out of reach.
Why was I so ready to cast aside the richness of my Jewish heritage? Why was I such a WASP wannabe, glomming on to snobbery and its affectations? Maybe I got it from my father, as he, more than my mother, aspired to rise in class, but he didn’t quite know how to get there. He spent money he didn’t have on suits and monogrammed shirts—his star sapphire ring did not come with a diploma and was a dead giveaway.
I put the pictures back in the carton and try one more time to get Howard to open the door.
“Howard. Are you sleeping?”
“Go away,” he says.
“Are you crying? You sound as if you are crying.”
“Go away,” he says, his tone turning cold.
Only fifteen minutes after calling the hospital, I begin to feel desperate—now, without question, I want him here. If he hasn’t come by four thirty, I will call again. I go back to the box of photographs.
There are a bunch of pictures from high school, but only one with Howard. He is sitting on the stoop of his house, a cigarette between his fingers. He’s seventeen, but he could be taken for forty. Was it his looks or his demeanor that belied his age? In the picture, he is looking up at the photographer and biting his lip, an angry expression I have come to know well.
My father changed our name from Meyerowitz to Meyers. Ralph, when we dated, announced he was changing his name from Lifshitz to Lauren. Young, urban Jews were fixated on everything WASP. Ralph knew, and I knew, that he would get rich catering to these desires. Girls would do anything to look like a shiksa. In 1958, girls would disappear at the end of junior year in high school and reemerge in September looking like Gidget with perky little noses that had as much business on their faces as my friend Phyllis’s painted-on eyebrows. Different doctors had signature noses. You could tell the doctor by the nose. It didn’t seem to matter if it fit the girl’s face—it was the only nose he did. In the end, nose or no nose, you could always tell a Jewish girl by her mother and her mother’s investment in h
aving a shiksa daughter.
My friend Dillys had class—that one visit to her apartment, and I was stamped with the Protestant imprimatur. I asked Dillys for help planning my wedding. She advised me to get a copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette. I had bought the myth that one could escape her crazy Jewish family by learning how to make a soufflé and serving it on the right dishes.
It was imperative that the wedding be “Emily Post” perfect. I sent out the correct wedding invitations, replaced Uncle Seymour and his clarinet with a young man and his cello. There was no chopped liver or pickled herring at the smorgasbord—actually, there was no smorgasbord. Instead, I’d enlisted a few waiters to walk around with trays of finger sandwiches. The large floral centerpieces, usually sent home with the lucky guest who had a little note under their plate, were replaced by a single rose at each setting. I gave myself credit, not only for meeting the measure of the book, but for managing to do it on a shoestring, as my father was still having a situation. There had been no money for college and now there was no money for a wedding.
My father, to his credit, saw the glaring fly in the ointment—I had picked the wrong man to play the groom. He took me aside and tried to talk sense into me, “You can do better,” he said. “What’s your rush? You’re only nineteen. What’s your hurry?”
I couldn’t tell if his conviction was out of concern for me, or if I was letting him down by my choice, but my bags were packed, the pillbox hat was in its box, the white gloves with the pearl buttons at the wrists were laid next to the Chanel-like suit—there was no way I was canceling this trip.
I knew in my heart that my father was right and that Howard was a mistake, but desperation and obfuscation feed each other—I needed a way out, and so did Howard. His fights with me were nothing compared to his rages against his smothering mother. When I tried to instruct him on how to behave in the world, he understandably balked—I was his mother all over again. The more I pushed, the worse it got. I had too much riding on the fantasy to be interrupted by the facts—my desires weren’t his. He was too uncomfortable in the world to which I aspired. Brooklyn is his home. This apartment around the corner from his parents is his refuge. So why the hell is he locked in the bedroom?
Where the hell is that doctor? I am so tired. I look—the light is still on but there is no shadow at the door.
Howard himself was not beyond pretense. I say this as part of my Emily Post defense—Howard also had his fantasies. Throughout high school, he tried, as did many of the adolescent boys at the time, to affect the Elvis Presley-James Dean look—not easy given that he was a chubby teenager with a soft face and ruddy complexion. Despite the heavy application of grease and continuous combing, he could not get his thin blonde hair to stay in the duck’s ass style of the day. The leather jacket and motorcycle boots didn’t do it either, as he had no hips and a flat ass—it’s hard to look cool when you have to keep hiking up your jeans. There was poignancy to his efforts, because though he tried mightily, they just weren’t working.
My high school years were unsuccessful as well. We had moved the beginning of sophomore year, and once again I was the new kid on the block—new school, new rules. I longed for the freedom to try on different identities and new behaviors, but the precariousness of my parents’ marriage told me that my mother was too fragile to handle a rebellious daughter I did manage to do some dating. In the beginning of my junior year I dated Joe. He was a tall, good-looking guy with a great smile and a strong body. He wore white-collared shirts, open at the neck, sleeves rolled up, and tight blue jeans. He was poor, but we still managed to have great dates—riding back and forth on the Staten Island Ferry for a nickel or hanging out in Prospect Park for nothing. I think I might have had sex with Joe, except whenever we kissed, my mother’s admonitions rang in my ear. They won’t respect you in the morning and Why should they buy the cow if they can get the milk for free? she’d say. I believed I had no choice but to be a good girl And, as I’ve written, college never happened. Until the I’d-rather-not-talk-about-it wedding night, my good girl status, like my hymen, remained intact.
I suppose you could say that Howard and I both failed adolescence, but young adulthood was not looking too promising either. We decided to do what many virginal, non-college-bound kids did back then—get married and play grownup.
When I proposed marriage, he grabbed it—the details of how we would support ourselves would come later. However, during the short year of our engagement, Howard continued to have royal fights with his mother. He would scream, get red in the face, and jump around the house like a caged tiger. His rages should have been a warning, but, as I’ve said, I couldn’t let reality interfere with fantasy.
I believe the wedding, despite the pretense, was a success, but the honeymoon was a disaster. Sex was awkward and painful, but in truth, hadn’t I set Howard up to fail? It wasn’t his fault that I felt no passion. It wasn’t that I lacked the capacity for erotic arousal; I’d found that out in my brief summer romance with Ralph. It was just that I lacked it with him. To make the honeymoon even more of a disappointment, as we were walking on the beach, I looked up, and there was my ex-boyfriend Joe. I hadn’t seen him in a year. He introduced me to his new wife, Claudia. They were having their honeymoon at our hotel. Joe looked great! Claudia looked great! I’ve no idea how I looked—down at the mouth, I suspect. I was wearing a new bathing suit that had only marginally passed the Howard test—his insistence that before I left the room, I move my body in contorted ways to be sure that there was no hint of a breast or cleavage. When I ran into Joe, my breasts were as flat as my mood. I gave him a hug—not too tight lest Howard erupt—took my leave, went back to my room, and cried. One week after the wedding, and the fantasy had faded like a photo left out in the sun.
At last there is a knock at the door—a young man not much older than I stands there with a doctor’s case in hand. I usher him in and tell him what I can about the situation. Three hours have passed since we got home, and I still have no idea why Howard is locked in the bedroom.
“Seven months pregnant,” I say when he looks at my belly.
He tries to reassure me that he will take care of it, but given that neither of us has any idea what it is, I am not reassured. Howard lets him into the bedroom, and I go back to nervously playing solitaire. Forty-five minutes later he comes out.
“You can go to bed now. I gave him a shot of valium, and here’s a prescription to fill in the morning. I also suggest he see a psychiatrist. He’s going to sleep.”
“Yes, thank you, but what was happening?”
The doctor looks at me and then looks away. “I have another call. I need to go,” he says.
“You can’t go. What was going on?”
“I can’t say; patient-client privilege.”
“I don’t give a damn. You can’t leave me here and not tell me what was going on.” I rubbed my belly for sympathy.
“All right,” he says, sitting down. “Your husband was having fantasies.”
“What fantasies?”
“He was having fantasies of wanting to kill you, but it’s okay. They were only fantasies. They scared him, so he locked you out of the bedroom so he wouldn’t hurt you.”
“My husband wants to kill me and you are leaving?”
“I told you, he is sleeping now. I believe they were passing thoughts and will be gone by morning. Go to bed. Get some sleep.”
The doctor leaves. I don’t know how I can stand to get in bed with that man. Would the shot wear off during the night? Would he wake up and kill me in my sleep? I clean up the cards and put them back in the desk. I wash my teacup. I put the wedding pictures back in the carton and decide that I am too tired to care anymore. The whole night has been a badly written mystery and I no longer care about the ending. I slide under the sheets, careful not to touch him.
The next morning Howard wakes. I try again to ask what happened the night before—what set him off—but he looks at me and scowls, as if I am prying and insens
itive to his anguish.
“It’s over. Don’t think about it. Let it go,” he says. “I’m going to my mother’s. I’ll be back later.”
“Aren’t you going to help me unpack?”
“Later,” he says.
Howard was right, it was over. It took twelve years and one thousand fuck you and fuck you too, three kids, and a family disaster before I would admit to myself that by marrying Howard, I hadn’t escaped the family tell. I’d only climbed down deeper.
dr. zhivago
Grandma took me to Orchard Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, to buy the layette. I wanted to tell her about the experience with Howard and the psychiatrist, but I knew it would upset her. She would have no context in which to understand it, so I kept it to myself and tried not to let it ruin the day.
“This is where I lived when I got off the boat,” Grandma said, pointing to a tenement to the left. “The street was like it is now. Maybe a little more crowded.”
It was hard to imagine it more crowded, as it was bustling with peddlers. Wares on wagons. Small shops with dusty windows squeezed together. Pages from the Jewish Daily Forward swirling around my feet. Horses swishing flies with their tails. We passed a butcher shop with a sign in Hebrew promising that it was kosher. On one of the wagons, I spotted orange bloomers and corseted bras.
“This is where I shop. Where else would I get the bloomers?” Grandma said.
I had to agree with her. I’d never seen corseted bras and orange bloomers in the department store.
Grandma led me into a shop so small that it looked like a room in a dollhouse. A little gray-haired lady, slightly stooped, her hair pinned back in a neat knot, smiled hello.
“This is my granddaughter. My first great-grandchild,” Grandma said in Yiddish, pointing at my belly. “We need a layette. It should be in yellow.”
“Yellow, but maybe some blue,” I said.
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