Ira and Evelyn’s Marriage Chapter 21

                                                                      Chapter 21

Ira and Evelyn’s Marriage

While Jeremy had assumed that buying CC the wonderful ring and sharing the room over Niagara Falls earned him their best lovemaking yet, CC is not there at all. She wants to talk. Nothing else. Talk. He has no choice. If he must, he must—but not happily.

Jeremy lights a joint hoping to get her there.

No luck. After a few drags, CC’s mind is sufficiently loosened, but not interested in the slightest.

“My parents’ marriage.”

“What about it?”

“I want to talk about it.”

“Now? Haven’t we already–

“I can’t help it. I keep thinking about them.”

“Really?”

“You don’t want to?” She knows he doesn’t. That irritates her.

“I do.” He lies.

She leaves it at that. She has begun to assume that he will do anything she asks of him.

“Say what you have to say,” he tells her in a kind voice, hoping she will take that as an apology for his reluctance.

She hesitates.

“No really,” he insists. “Go ahead.”

“We don’t have to.”

“No, I want to know about them. Carol needs to talk to me about her parents sometimes. She feels better afterwards. What did you want to tell me?”

“I keep trying to think nice thoughts about them. I’ve exaggerated what I’ve told you.  Things aren’t that bad… Or maybe they are. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is, but it’s wrong.”

“You have no idea?

CC takes a deep breath then, in a funereal tone, she continues. “I don’t think they love each other. My mother’s pretty difficult.”

“Stick to whether they love each other. Whether they do or don’t. Not whose fault it is.” There is a bit of scorn in his voice.

“It isn’t just me,” CC snaps back. “A lot of the girls in the dorm talk about the same thing. They try to make sense of what’s going on with their parents. Whether they love each other, but especially who’s to blame. You think that’s nothing, but you’re wrong.”

She goes to the kitchen. He watches her from the living room. She opens a cabinet: Bumble Bee tuna fish, some canned string beans, corn, asparagus. Nothing appeals to her. She wishes she were home. Even in the dorm. She could go to the candy machine. She closes the cabinet and moves on to another, where she finds the glasses. She turns on the cold water, sticks her finger under the stream, waiting for it to get colder. Satisfied, she fills up her glass and takes a sip, then another sip, then she gulps down the entire glass. All the while, her thoughts play like an endless loop in her mind.

“Shrinks are making a good living off of this,” he tells her.

“I know.”

She wants something very cold. She finds an ice tray and frees up ice cubes, puts two in her glass and fills it with tap water. She returns to the bedroom with her ice water.

“Everyone’s trying to get their therapist to side with them,” CC tells Jeremy as she reenters the room

“They say there isn’t supposed to be any guilt in therapy. That’s bullshit.”

She agrees with him. She smiles…“No guilt for the patient. There’s plenty of blame for everyone else. Plenty!”

She finishes the water, starts sucking on an ice cube. Chews it, grinds away, swallows one.

“It’s never been like this before. My mother has always said things that sting my father. Now she’s using a dagger… He’s no angel, either.”

With that, CC’s anxiety, which wasn’t much when she started speaking, leaps out of its hole and is quickly working her over. Assuming that her parents love each other has been the cement holding the family together. The possibility of them breaking up is inconceivable. It isn’t just their relationship. She wonders if they’d still be a family. She can’t imagine that happening.

“We’ve always felt connected. Whether we understand each other or not, we’ve had that. Even when we’re angry about something. If they got divorced, it would be so strange. I’m not sure Jay or Mark would still be my brothers—well they would but not the same way.”

“I’m sure that wouldn’t change. You’re born with that connection.”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine coming home and we’re not all there in our house. You and your dad—his four divorces meant nothing?”

“Pretty much.”

“I can’t imagine it. It’s frightening.”

She doesn’t often experience actual fear. Yes, she can be a nervous chatterbox, full of doubts. She has always pulled at her cuticles, and her stupid stomach can get very tricky from anything upsetting. All are manifestations of fear. That’s what her therapist calls it. But actual fear is something else. She doesn’t ordinarily know what that’s like. It just doesn’t happen to her. The sensation isn’t totally foreign. During The Creature from the Black Lagoon, she was terrified. But otherwise the fear she has now is new. Never anything to this degree. She’s read about anxiety—being afraid and you don’t know why. But reading about it is very different from experiencing it. It isn’t just right now. For the last few months, anxiety keeps taking hold of her. Mostly it’s about her parents. But sometimes there seems to be no reason. It just takes over. Talking has always helped, but right now, talking to Jeremy is accentuating it. What’s good about him, the pot, the shamelessness which allows them to talk about anything, has given her a grip. But not now.

“I know he loves her. And she loves him. That makes two.” She often adds up conclusions like that, as if arithmetic will solve the puzzle. If she can come up with three or four more good things about their relationship, logic might win her over to that point of view. Saying out loud that they love each other also helps, pronouncing her conclusion in words. It’s been real without that. She’s been in their presence and shared it when it was there. Copacabana, Copacabana—repeating those words in her head sometimes is like a magical incantation. That memory of them being off to the Copa repeatedly flashes in her brain to rescue her, but it isn’t there right now. Her anxiety is.

“Maybe they don’t love each other.” Another trick—pronouncing the worst possibility out loud sometimes helps to encapsulate it. But just saying it without conviction doesn’t calm her.

Over the years, therapy’s been beneficial. Speaking her thoughts out loud allows her to evaluate them more clearly—step back, see issues with new eyes. When she gets going, she keeps going, much further than where her mind might have brought her if she weren’t trying to shape a conclusion out loud. Smoking a joint with Jeremy has acted similarly. But right now, this second, her fear won’t go away.  Perhaps she’s been affected by Jeremy’s initial resistance. Even with the pot, talking about her parents’ marriage  embarrasses her. His attitude when she brought them up. Seemingly Jeremy is now tied to her, but is he? He is still a stranger.

He is a stranger but she’s read him wrong. Despite his initial tone of voice, Jeremy is no longer reluctant to listen to her. He wants to be there for her. His impatience came from his disappointment that he was not going to score after buying her the ring. Considering its cost, buying it was a reckless gesture, confirmation of just how intense his feelings are for her. That it didn’t do anything to her was a big disappointment? But now he has moved beyond that. He wants to listen. Whatever it takes. Not just for sex. Because he does care. At this moment he cares. Wherever her head has gone he wants to go.

The longevity of her parents’ relationship amazes him. It’s so different from his father’s marriages. CC sifting through the blame bothers him. What must she think of his father. He fell in love again and again, each time as intensely as the first time. His ecstasy was real, but it never lasted beyond a few months. Sometimes it was weeks. Before Jeremy married Carol, that’s how Jeremy had been with his girlfriends—exactly like his father. In love, then not in love. It wasn’t a decision or new determination. It simply happened.

It’s different with CC. When he fell in love before, it had always been with a woman with whom, from the very beginning, he had reservations. He didn’t like something about her nose, or her hair, or her voice, or her manner, or some attitudes he detected. Something was wrong from the outset. Wanting to find the one, he’d overlook these shortcomings and convince himself that it was her. She was the one. But he knew all along. He’d feel something like the love he was looking for, but then it would die. His original qualms invariably overcame his desire to be in love. What was different about CC was that he had no reservations—zero, none at all. He didn’t have to fool himself. Her beauty stunned him. In an instant he was gone. He still is.

If anything, that’s part of the problem. His doubts about her feelings won’t go away. Dave’s easy cynicism about romance and true love is true enough in a general way. But Dave never mentioned the real doubt he had about the relationship. It’s buried somewhere in Jeremy’s own doubts as well. She’s a level or two, maybe three levels, above where Jeremy’s looks ordinarily would have gotten him. He isn’t bad-looking, but he doesn’t compare to CC. Jeremy knows it. He is thrilled to have CC, but he can’t fully believe that luck had finally come his way, that CC loves him like he loves her.  He’s been hopeful. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But hope is not money in the bank. Perhaps he never will grasp that she’s his. That’s what happens when a matchup defies the ordinary rules of attraction. She’s so much better-looking than he is.

He would do anything to hold her, talk about anything she wants to talk about, but he doesn’t want to be drawn into the thicket of the moral questions that preoccupy her. Not about her family. There are much more important things happening. Addressing what’s evil in America is far more relevant than the rights and wrongs, the gossip and bullshit going on in the marriage of  two rich people in Great Neck.

He hasn’t tired of his initial fascination with her family, particularly Nanny.  Not so much anything that CC has said in particular. It’s the look CC gets whenever Nanny is brought up. He’s mentioned to Dave how much CC is taken with her grandmother’s wisdom. Dave made a good point. He compared her to Polonius. How Polonius gave all this great advice, wisdom that is still quoted today.

“‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’

“‘Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.’

“‘To thine own self be true.’

“Shakespeare stands on a pedestal with timeless advice.” Dave told Jeremy. “But why does it come out of the mouth of Polonius, a foolish old man. Is her grandmother a fool?

“No, she isn’t,” Jeremy answered, “but something about her bugs me.”

“Wisdom is always after the fact,” Dave responded. “It’s old people talk. It’s a lot easier to be wise when you’re not immersed in what’s going on. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, dressed up as an immortal statement for the ages. It sounds good, but it’s coming from someone who is no longer in the game.”

Jeremy’s memories of his grandmother are very different then CC’s. She was a foreign presence. Not like family at all. He still remembers the smell of his grandmother’s gefilte fish, the unappetizing gel surrounding each piece—her glop. As soon as he entered his grandmother’s apartment, the smell of rotting onions invaded his perceptions. Later, he hated the smell of urine when his father took him to his grandmother’s nursing home. Once he went willingly. The second time, he went because it seemed important to his father. But never after that. Even in the lobby, as he entered the nursing home, there was a urine smell, like an institutional bathroom that hadn’t been cleaned well enough. Urine, which ordinarily has little smell, disgusted him. Until CC’s Nanny that was his reaction to old people. The smell of urine. They had been banished from his thoughts. Like they didn’t exist.

“Do your parents go to bed at the same time?” he asks CC.

“They used to. Why?”

“Wanting to end the day at the same time—that togetherness, trying to be one, it’s—” Jeremy doesn’t silence the thought that’s pops into his head. “Like coming together.”

He instantly feels foolish. It’s the usual Jeremy shtick, proud of his courage to do and say the unsayable, followed by his awareness that it hasn’t gone over too well.

“You’re weird,” she says, not really meaning it. She’s not turned off by the incessant naughty boy that Jeremy delights in being. He is so much like Mark. She doesn’t like Mark’s effect on her father, the way he tweaks him. She hates it, but there is this hidden piece of her that envies his courage. If that is what it is. She wishes she had some of that, although what she dislikes about Jeremy is often exactly that. What she likes about Jeremy is exactly the same thing.

“They used to go to bed together. Every night.”

“When you were little?”

“At least I assumed they did. When I was young, I was usually asleep when they went to bed, although sometimes I was up until I heard them in their room.”

“Did you ever hear them fucking?”

“Leave it to you to ask that.”

“Did you—”

“I’d listen to them brushing their teeth, gargling. That’s what I remember. My bedtime was eight-thirty, except on Wednesdays. We were allowed to stay up to watch Father Knows Best. Even Mark liked watching it with us. Watching that show made us all happy to be in our family.”

Jeremy softly pinches CC’s cheek like a grandfather greeting the young ones with sloppy, gushy affection. Jeremy coos, “You were such an all-American family.”

“Along with a hundred million other people. It just had that effect. Didn’t you watch it?”

He’s relieved to answer honestly. “I did. Either at my mother’s apartment or my father’s. I had a regular childhood.”

The challenge met, Jeremy persists. “So, they went up to bed together?”

“Back then, yes. No longer. My last few years in high school, they came up to their bedroom at separate times, when they finished whatever they were doing. My mother liked to stay up pretty late. He had to go to work the next morning.”

“What would she do?”

“God only knows. Probably going through her clothes, trying things on, doing her nails.”

“Speaking to her secret lover?”

“Not everyone is like you, Jeremy.”

“You mean like us?”

“You are so off about that. My parents and their friends, people at the club, they aren’t having affairs. Believe me, the gossip would have surfaced. They were either working or with their families.”

“I bet that’s not true,” Jeremy counters. “Your parents probably hid it from you. Every one of the men had secretaries. My mother told me. She was once a secretary. She fell in love with her boss. He reminded her of her father, and she was crazy about her father.”

“So she slept with her boss?” CC asks, a bit alarmed.

“No. But she said it could have happened. It just never did.”

“Your mother told you that?”

“Well . . .”

“When you were a kid she told you that?” she repeats, still alarmed.

“Not her. But later on, my father told me she had told him that. Maybe he was looking for an excuse to throw at me for his affairs. But my guess is she could understand those things. That’s how she tolerated him.”

“I saw a picture of your mother,” CC says. “I would have liked to meet her.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She offers him an acknowledgment. “Maybe a few of the men at the club lose control. But not many.”

His skeptical look brings further argument.

“I’ll say it again. If people were fooling around, I would have heard something. I mean, every once in a while, there was a giant scandal, but it was rare. You have this idea of this rich people’s club like in La Dolce Vita. People constantly flirting, getting each other into bed. That’s not the scene. They’re into eating, losing control that way. At least the men… And looking beautiful, that’s what’s expected of the women. My mother is an ornament for my father. Like all of the women there. It’s not to seduce anyone.”

“She’s an ornament?”

“Well, it’s not just for my father. She loves being the queen at the club.”

“So, no one is having affairs?”

“Look. I’m not saying people at the club are so holy. It’s just the rules. The rules, not their goodness. People don’t want to risk public humiliation. That’s what goes along with being caught having an affair.”

“Those rules are going to change. All of them,” Jeremy says confidently “Every last one. Pick the most forbidden behavior you can think of.”

“Murder?”

“Well, okay.”

She smiles. “A guy dressing like a girl? Kissing another guy in public.”

“Why not? I don’t care what it is. We’re going to throw away all that bullshit? Who made it forbidden. Guys with guys. Sure thing. What is going to happen is people will go for what they want. You only have one life to live. Being free to choose whatever you want should be the rule. Yes, like in the movies, like beautiful Hollywood people they assume they can have anything they want. We need to relish our dreams.”

Her voice becomes accusatory. “That’s what you want, everyone living wild Hollywood lives?”

He’s scored. Until now a Hollywood perspective never occurred to him. Anything but. Except for Jane Fonda, but otherwise Hollywood people are the last people he admires. They were gods during his adolescence, but now, the quintessence of the 60’s is exactly the opposite, The stupidity of movie stars? No way.

She continues: “Having affairs wouldn’t work. People lose their figures when they turn thirty or forty. Once they get comfortable in their life.”

“Maybe that’ll change. Maybe people will stay in shape. Lately, there have been a lot of movies about middle-aged women taking off. They’re going to have to stay trim.”

“You mean have a lean and hungry look? Maybe,” she answers. Her interest in the conversation is trailing off.  She’s still processing what he was saying about her parents going up to bed together. “For years, my mother stayed downstairs, watching movies. I could hear those movies.”

“Romantic movies?”

“Mostly. It wasn’t Westerns or war movies.”

There’s a pause. Jeremy grabs the opportunity to flip into his teaching voice. “The real test of a relationship is who is getting more destroyed.”

“Meaning what?” she asks sharply. She’s not in the mood for another one of his lectures.

Undaunted, he continues. “The battle of the sexes didn’t begin with Gloria Steinem, or Betty Friedan. It’s always been center stage. Romance eventually turns into man versus woman, and woman versus man.”

“‘Versus’? I thought it’s getting together.”

“Yeah—getting together with someone that can destroy you.” He thinks a bit more. “The danger is there from the beginning. Why do you think high school guys are so afraid to ask a girl out?”

“You mean you?”

“Not just me.”

“Like you with Marlene Schneider?”

“Okay, if it makes you feel better—me.” His voice becomes conciliatory. “It sounds cute when you get older. Very cute—teenagers in love. The one thing it isn’t is cute. I remember it clearly. It wasn’t cute at all. I was terrified.”

“Were you? Truth—no bullshit.”

She doesn’t need to hear him admit it. “I’m lucky,” CC tells him. “Girls don’t have to make the first move, but I’ve been hurt. I was crazy about this guy, Jeff Saperstein. Tenth grade. We got very involved. He had me rub his penis through his pants. I’d never touched a penis, but I would have done anything for him.”

“That’s as far as you went?”

“That’s not the point. He told his friends about it and they got all over me, teased me. His friend Michael called me a whore.”

“Gang-shamed you?”

“He had a new girlfriend a week later. Point is, that threw me for a long time. I kept remembering how hurt I was.”

“You? You were that desperate?”

“That’s what women do when they are in love. That’s what the shame is about. Or the anger?

“Men are no different.”

He agrees. Jeremy gets up and looks through his records. He puts on the Everly Brothers. He sings along with them.

Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars

Any heart not tough nor strong enough

To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain . . .

He watches CC’s reaction as the song continues:

Some fools rave of happiness, blissfulness, togetherness

Some fools fool themselves, I guess

But they’re not fooling me

 

I know it isn’t true, know it isn’t true

Love is just a lie, made to make you blue

Love hurts, oh, love hurts . . .

Jeremy lifts the arm of the record player. “Exactly. True love sucks.  My fear with Marlene Schneider was realistic. Love like that is very very scary. Sure, I was Mister Suave when I was told a girl liked me. But that was with them. If I didn’t know a girl’s feelings? Forget it. I was terrified.”

“Do you think it is always like that?”

“Sometimes the whole thing dribbles down to nothing. That’s painless. But people get hurt. Hurt badly. What happened to you, being dropped for someone else.”

He smiles. “Hitler couldn’t invent a worse torture.”

“Only you could come up with that comparison.”

“It’s true,” he insists. “That’s why they make so many movies about lovers.  Quarreling, broken hearts, the audience in pain when love between them seems to be dying. Then they are together again. Movie after movie. It’s powerful. It never gets old. It’s because people are only too familiar with that pain. It is that real. It grabs your heart, your guts, every part of you. Like Hitler movies.”

“Come on!”

“It’s true. There’s a million of them. Everyone’s been there. It’s never boring. Hitler was this small, little, nothing guy, He’ll be remembered forever. Just as there will always be romantic stories, the hurt, the resurrection of their love.”

“That’s just a little bit over the top. Love and Hitler?”

“Fine, it isn’t true. The worst pain someone might feel in their whole life has nothing to do with love. Other things are more important.”

“It’s such a negative way of thinking about it.”

“Look, I know people joke about it. The battle of the sexes. Oh yeah, the battle of the sexes. Ha-ha. But what happens is powerful. Real damage, devastating damage occurs. It tears you apart. For some people it’s enough to give up on love, to play it safe for the rest of their lives.”

“I suppose so but sometimes people win.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “Like me.”

She laughs at him. “Right. Mister Superman.”

CC thinks over her parents’ marriage in Jeremy’s context. She’s doesn’t think her mother is convinced that their romance is over, not completely, nor does her father, but the idea that there are winners and losers rings true. When she was in high school, that was clear to everyone. Winners and losers. Someone was always in need of comforting. While someone else strutted around the cafeteria. No one doubted their suffering was real except grown-ups, who thought the whole thing was puppy love. You grow out of it, blah blah blah.

But in a marriage? Winners and losers? The whole point of marriage is to do away with the high school bullshit, the uncertainty, the drama, the catastrophe when you’re rejected. With the spin Jeremy is outlining, CC is looking at her parents’ marriage with fresh eyes. Neither of them is having an affair. She has no suspicions of that, but it’s almost worse than that.

“On that basis, my mom’s winning. She still looks like a million bucks. She’s full of energy. She comes and goes everywhere. She seems to be having a good time. A great time!”

“And your father?”

“He’s doing all right.”

But her face says otherwise, and she soon acknowledges the truth.

“His zip is gone.” She thinks further. “He always has what he thinks is a serious expression. When I pointed that out to him he told me that’s how mature people are supposed to look. Only he doesn’t just look serious. He looks morose. He’s dragging himself around.”

“He used to sometimes be a kibitzer. That person is gone. I haven’t seen it in years. He almost never smiles. He’s mostly sad. He takes naps on the weekend. Falls asleep during TV programs. When they go to the theater, my mother tells me the same thing. Once they were in the first row and he started snoring. The actor looked at them. She jabbed him pretty hard. She wasn’t laughing when she told me about it.”

CC continues. “You can see it when he walks. His shoulders are no longer straight and proud. There were times he’d strut—well, not strut, but clearly was doing just fine. No longer. He’s only fifty-eight. He could be seventy-five. He’s put on fifteen or twenty pounds.” She hesitates. “You think my mom is doing that to him?”

“What do you think?” Jeremy asks? “It sounds typical. There’s a reason men die younger than women. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. And you said your father has a heart problem.”

“It isn’t her. He loves to eat.”

“Your mother makes it for him.”

“I don’t know. It’s him. There are no leftovers. He cleans his plate and hers. And when we were young, ours too.”

“He’s fat?”

“Not when we were younger. But he’s got a paunch. It’s not that bad, but it was never there before.”

Jeremy says nothing.

“Sometimes I think my parents have gone beyond the battle of the sexes. . . It’s War! . . . If they sometimes love each other it’s besides the point.”

“Do they?”

“When my mother looks smashing, you can see it in my father’s eyes. And hers. They are wildly in love. Both of them. Still.”

“Surprise,” Jeremy declares. “Beauty trumps everything else. That’s where love comes from.”

“Your version of love, Jeremy. Your version. There are other ways to love.”

“Look, I know—what I have with Carol. That’s love. Some people think that is the only real thing. They’re not wrong.”

“You understand that?”

“Yes, but it’s what I felt for my mother. There should be a different word for what I have with you. It is something different. When I look at you, your beauty goes straight from my eyes to my heart.”

“Your heart or” She looks at his penis.

He puts his hand there and smiles his wise-guy smile. “It’s electric. There is nothing more certain than what I feel when I look at you. Everything else disappears. You’re saying that’s what happens to your parents?”

“Well. Not quite… But yes. When they go out.”

Jeremy’s voice becomes professorial. “Doesn’t surprise me. It is only shallow people who don’t judge by appearances. ‘The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.’”

“Who said that?” she asks.

“Oscar Wilde . . .” His lecturing voice continues. “Love’s there when it’s there. It’s not when it’s not. It isn’t complicated. A moral yardstick is irrelevant. I know you want to bring that into the picture, but it’s a lot simpler than that.”

“Well, love’s there.” She hesitates for effect. “When they are going out. It’s there. True love, as you’re defining it…But it only happens when they’re going out,” she adds. “There’s nothing in their day-to-day life. She’s a different person. So is he. She can be mean, bitchy.”

“What does your father do with that?”

“He hates it.” CC smiles ironically. “My mother tells him it’s a compliment. She can act that way because she loves him. He’s the only person with whom she can totally be herself.”

“Is that what’s been going on with us?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve gotten to know your nasty side.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” she says.

“So that means you don’t love me enough?”

“I’m getting there.”

“So, when you are dishing it out, I should thank your mother,” he says lightheartedly, but in truth, she’s well on her way, and subliminally he knows it. She’s been putting him down often enough for him to no longer ignore it.

“It’s just such a contrast,” CC continues. “When people are over, she’ll grab his head, plant a lot of kisses, like the love she has for him is bursting out of her. It’s cute. Convincing. My dad pretends that she is just being silly, but he loves that. I mean, the prettiest woman in the room is showing all this love for him. And my mother means it. It’s so strange. She means it. I can tell that. But it is only on stage.” She thinks further. “At least it’s there sometimes.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Nothing. Well. . . When others aren’t around. It’s hard to know what to think. Is all that lovy-dovy an act?”

“Is it?” he asks.

“I don’t think so. But it’s confusing. Do they have to be onstage for it to take place? Something’s not right about how they are off stage.”

“Like what?” Jeremy asks.

“A thousand things.”

“Give me a for instance.”

“Small things, but they add up.”

“Like what?” he repeats impatiently. “Give me a for instance.”

“I gave you an example before. Those fights when she puts his things away. He puts his pruner exactly where he wants it, so he can find it easily. She moves it to where she thinks it belongs. That’s important to her.”

Jeremy smiles. “That’s diddly shit. Every relationship has that. I mean, if you live together.”

“But it happens again and again. “‘Honey. . .’ ‘Dear. . .’ They used to talk like that, with a saccharine tone, but no longer. Now it’s just plain scolding. They throw it at each other.  And that escalates very quickly. It feeds on itself. It’s about diddly shit, but when they get going, they spit venom in every syllable. Especially my mom.”

CC speaks sharply, imitating first her father, then her mother.

“‘I put it there for a reason.’

“‘Where I told you not to put it.’

“‘Where I can find it.’”

Her imitation strikes Jeremy as funny, and he chuckles.

“It’s not funny,” she says.

He wipes the smile off his face and salutes her like a private with a drill sergeant. She ignores his theatrics.

Her voice is calm. “Sometimes I think my parents hate each other.”

“Hate?”

“Hate! I can hear it in their voices.”

“That’s part of love.”

She shakes her head. “Bullshit. I’m talking about hate! There’s a wellspring of hatred between my parents, years of hate, decades of hate. And it keeps growing and growing. Every year a little bit more. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. One day it’s going to pop.”

“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”

Unswayed, she continues. “My biggest fear is that it develops in every relationship if you’re together long enough. Sometimes I hear on the news that a woman has killed her husband. Or vice versa. The neighbors are shocked. Everyone thought they were a happy couple.” CC’s tone is low-key but firm. “I understand that. Hate builds up. The murderer snapped—for just that second. Something like that. If my dad had a gun. . . Or mom. . . No, I don’t think they could do it. But—”

“You know the opposite of love isn’t hate,” Jeremy says. “It’s indifference.”

“That is such therapist bullshit. My therapist told me that four times. Four times! Each time he forgot he’d told me that before. Four times! The same brilliant insight. What book did you get that from?”

Jeremy laughs. “My therapist. You know,” he adds “the more you tell me, the more it sounds like—did you read Games People Play?”

“Except it’s not a game. She is not playing with him. My mother’s hurt. Really hurt. And so is my father. Yeah, everyone quibbles.” CC takes a breath, then her voice stabs at him: “But not with their vehemence!”

“Who’s in charge. It’s about that. Every close relationship. Not just between people in love,” Jeremy offers.

“Wrong!” she tells him. “It’s not that important in friendships. I mean it’s there and can get out of hand, sometimes, but no one gets that hurt. Not usually.”

“Right, which is my point. There’s got to be love for them to be able to hurt each other.”

“Fine they love each other. But that’s the point. Sometimes I think love poisons the universe. That’s why everyone writes so many songs about it, poems, novels, movies, trying to recover. It shatters so many people.!”

“I don’t know. The way I am in love with you–”

“It gets pretty nasty. When my father takes her on, she sees that as proof that he doesn’t love her, which gets her even more upset. One time, when he was holding his ground, she cursed him for his cold eyes. It wasn’t an act. She was heartbroken, she was crying as she looked at him.”

She stops for a moment, considers that, then continues. “He didn’t care.”

“Your mother told you that?”

“I was there. It’s true. His eyes were cold, but I thought he was doing what he needed to do.”

“They’ve always fought in front of you?”

“Not when we were kids. After Mark left for school. . . No, after he started attacking my father, their fights escalated.”

“So, it’s all Mark’s fault?”

She smiles. “Probably is.”

“Freud claimed a woman’s son becomes her sword against her husband.”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Boy, speaking of the blame game. You blame Mark?”

“I never thought of it, but it’s true,” CC answers. “Mark’s brought a lot of this on… And who knows? Maybe my mother has encouraged it. You hear about these alcoholic men turning on their wives and how their son comes to her rescue.  I don’t see my father going after my mother like that.  But it is similar. Mark and my mother have become allies. Not so much to protect themselves from my father. I guess, to overthrow him. When I was young he ruled the roost and she was happy enough about that.”

“She was?”

“But not now. Not for years. What really bothers me is that too many times I don’t think they are talking to each other. They are trying to score points with me. Get me to side with them.”

“How often is that?”

“Lately, a lot.”

“I guess that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“The reason you need to talk about this.”

“Maybe… I can’t stand when my parents do that. It puts me right in the middle. What’s worse, I take sides. As much as I tell myself to stay out of it, I can’t help it. Just what they want me to do.”

“So then why do you do it?”

“How can I not do it? People say I should be a lawyer because I can make good arguments, but I’m being trained to be a judge. Lawyers can argue for either side. Depends on who hires them. They just have to do it well. That’s not what’s going on here. I want to decide who is really right. And who’s wrong. That matters a lot to me.”

“I can see that. Seriously, though, is it that important?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know.” She stops for a moment to think further about the answer to his question. “If I can decide, I won’t have to think about it so much.”

“Maybe you don’t have to think about it at all. Just decide!”

She laughs. “Between my mother and father? If only.”

She’s quiet again, thinking some more.

“If it were only their fights. But it isn’t. What goes on every day—he’s no angel. It’s not like he brings flowers and chocolates for her on a whim, because he was thinking about her during the day. He doesn’t forget Valentine’s Day or her birthday. I’ll say that for him. But caring about her, thinking about what’s happening with her. He isn’t that interested in how her day has gone. Occasionally he asks, but it’s pro forma. And when she’s upset, if she starts going over and over a story, he stops listening. My mother told me. When they are in bed, he falls asleep in the middle of one of her sentences when she is talking about something that matters to her.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know– insults her friend Irene or Stella received. Wars they’re in. Who’s right, who’s wrong. She cares a lot about that.”

“You mean gossip.”

“You can call it that. But gossip matters. Okay, she repeats herself.  I can see falling asleep to some of that. But if she is repeating herself it’s because what she’s saying matters to her. A lot! It’s not chit chat. She sees his falling asleep as proof he really doesn’t care.”

CC thinks it over some more.

“He’s stopped hugging her, which he used to do. Years ago, he used to just go over to her and give her a hug—sometimes several times in a day. That’s gone. And there is practically nothing like that from her. Never was. Well, when other people are around, but otherwise…”

CC stops again to refuel.

“She gets irritated by him very easily. She’s always correcting him. Weekends, she’s out of the house a lot with her girlfriends, having lunch or shopping. That’s because she doesn’t want to hang out with him. Most of the time she would rather be with someone else. I hear her on the phone, joking with her friends, relaxed, talking nice and easy, laughing. I never hear her laugh with my father. They always sound serious. They’re tense. They can’t let down their guard”

“That means she doesn’t love him?”

“What else can it mean? . . . She’s no better. She never thinks to buy what he likes at the supermarket. Well, maybe for his birthday. But otherwise what he likes doesn’t mean anything to her. He likes ginger snaps. She never remembers to buy them. So, he has to make a separate trip for them. Other things, too. This kind of bacon that he likes—no, loves—Canadian bacon. A lot of things. Funny. I remember what he likes. I get his stuff if I’m at Waldbaum’s. He really appreciates it. How come she doesn’t?”

As she continues, she weighs what she is saying, trying to get a hold of it.

“It goes beyond not being thoughtful, not remembering what he likes. It’s more complicated—because she remembers that stuff for me, and Jay. And Mark! Especially Mark. I think it’s her way of telling my father that she won’t be his servant. I’ve heard her say something like that when he asked about the bacon, like he is a slave driver.”

“Is he?”

“No more than anyone else in a relationship. That’s big in the magazines now. Men as overseers, oppressors. It’s the opposite with my parents. She expects him to be her servant, to be thoughtful about what she wants 100 percent of the time.”

Jeremy is enjoying where they are going “That’s what most women want. It’s my way or the highway. Guys’ joke—happy wife, happy life.”

“So why does everyone say that’s what men are like? Women are the dictators, not men.”

“That’s the bullshit in the magazines,” Jeremy says. “Have you noticed how many magazines now have women editors?”

“But I think it’s true,” CC counters. “Men do control most marriages.”

“I’m talking about Jewish marriages. I’m sure you’ve heard the put-downs of JAPs.”

That stops her.

“Okay,” she admits. “It’s true. The students up here are amazed by how different Jewish girls are, especially the ones from Long Island. Well, my mother is what happens when they get married. My grandparents, Herman and Mimi, raised my mother to be a princess. I don’t think they realized the consequences. Like nothing else mattered other than what my mother wanted. My father reaped the reward, his very own princess. He’s expected to be her servant.”

“That’s why Jewish men,” Jeremy tells her,  “make the best husbands.” Jeremy has heard that said many times. He believes it. Or is it that CC’s mother is so beautiful and her father isn’t nearly as handsome?

Jeremy is bothered by that thought. Will he will always have to keep trying with CC? Pull magic from his hat?  Did the ring mean nothing? They are in dangerous territory. She doesn’t help things.

“Whoever told you that about Jewish men” she tells him, “I guarantee they weren’t talking about you.”

He absorbs her put-down without much reaction. He’s getting used to it. Not all Jewish husbands are so giving. He isn’t with Carol.

“I don’t get it,” CC says. “To me it’s simple. My mother has the time. He’s got to work fifty, sixty hours a week. Sometimes seventy. Why shouldn’t she remember his ginger snaps at Waldbaum’s? That says it all.”

“I’m lucky with Carol,” Jeremy says. “She enjoys taking care of me. When she shops for me, it makes her day. I don’t have to ask for anything. She knows what I like—sometimes before I do. She loves that. She feels great giving to me. It excites her. It thrills her. Seeing my enthusiasm when she brings home the groceries—when I help her bring the bags in, I am dying to see what’s in them. When I get to take things out of the bag—she says I’m like a kid on Christmas morning attacking the presents. When I’ve gotten exactly what I wanted—the look on my face gives her a big smile.” Half to himself, he murmurs, “Although she slaps my hand if I stick my finger in the chicken salad.”

He continues. “Even if I am not enthusiastic,” he goes on, “Carol knows she’s getting something I need or that I’m going to want. She gives me a lot of thought. She’s usually right. I might have never said anything, but she notices how I looked at something in the store. She  knows me. Without thinking about it. Without effort—she loves doing all of that.”

“She sounds amazing.”

“She loves loving. It’s what she’s about.”

“She’s that way with everyone?

He thinks for a moment. “Well. . . Not really. Sometimes. Mainly, Alyosha and me.”

By speaking about Carol with such fondness, he has broken an unwritten rule they have unconsciously imposed on themselves. But it doesn’t jar him out of his connection to CC.

Nor does it register with CC for more than a moment; it merely helps her make her point. “Well,” she says, “my mother is nothing like Carol. The opposite. When my father comes home from work, I can see if he’s had a bad day. I mean, sometimes my heart aches for him. To start with, he’s not crazy about being a lawyer. He’s like me. He likes to debate, but he doesn’t have that edge, the pleasure his colleagues take when they’ve trounced their adversary. They’re at it constantly. Not just their adversaries. They do it to each other. In the office. Every chance they get. My father’s not like that. Basically, he’s gentle. It upsets him when he loses his temper.

“The reason he goes on being a lawyer is my mother… and us. He’s our servant. His job, is his responsibility. Sometimes the office politics really tear him up. They’re barracudas. I mean, an office full of lawyers? He’ll defend himself if he has to, but being surrounded by it! And then there are the times when they gang up on one of their esteemed colleagues. Really go at it. Certain mornings I can see how reluctant he is to go in. Like he might face the firing squad.”

“Capitalism,” Jeremy announces definitively, like he has solved not only CC’s father’s problems but the mystery of human suffering, now and forever.

She shakes her head and barks sarcastically, “Capitalism? For you, everything is politics. Capitalism? You really believe that, don’t you? Political change is going to end the way guys go at each other.”

“It certainly would help. You don’t think you can change things?”

“Maybe in my own life I can do things better, but social change. No I don’t trust any of it… But never mind that.”  she snarls, “He’s surrounded by lawyers. . . . Capitalism? You are a one-trick pony. For a smart person, you are so stupid. Really stupid. You don’t know what it’s like to be among lawyers, do you? They can’t stop themselves. Some people squash beetles. They save it for people. At least, that’s what my father tells me.”

“And your father is not like that?”

“He isn’t. He loves to debate, like Mark and me, but it’s not mean-spirited. At his office, he’s usually on the receiving end.” She hesitates, then adds, “I’ll say this. My father’s never missed a day of work. I’m sure there were days when he did face the firing squad. And they fired off a round. . . . He gets over it. He hangs in there, no matter what.”

“That means a lot.”

“Being able to withstand it. When people pop off. This ugly side comes out. Some people think, oh, that’s their true feelings when it comes out like that, and it is. But a five-second burst means nothing. It’s like a fart. So what. Yeah, there is bad stuff inside of everyone—smelly rot. It passes. What’s important is how you take it, how you are day after day. How you hold up…”

Jeremy doesn’t make any attempt to add his two cents. He’s even a bit proud of her fart metaphor. She’s coming along. Learning from him—how to be gross. She’s on a roll and he’s enjoying it. More than that, he likes her admiration of her father, her respect for him. It’s so simple when respect is there. Listening to the way she talks about him makes Jeremy realize that, essentially, he doesn’t respect anyone. He’d like to. He craves it, but as soon as he finds a flaw in someone he might respect, his respect disappears. He envies CC’s comfort in possessing it.

“When my father’s upset,” she continues, “it’s obvious. When I don’t know what’s bothering him, I ask. And, the last few years, he talks to me about it.

“My mother notices nothing! Actually, it’s worse when she does. When he’s insecure, she hates him for showing it. She makes a whole production out of it. Just so he knows that she’s noticed. And what she’s thinking is pretty obvious. Like how did she ever get stuck with a person like him?”

“All of that goes on in front of you?”

“I think they view me as old enough to take it.” She smiles ironically. “Proof they love me. No secrets.”

“Look what I missed,” Jeremy interjects. “I got none of that kind of love after my parents split up. Compared to your parents, they seem like angels.”

“What’s pathetic is, they can’t help it,” she goes on. “They’re not happy being that way. It makes them miserable. But they can’t control it. Since Mark stirred things up, it’s a hundred times worse. Maybe it never would have gotten started if Mark hadn’t been Mark. I mean, before he started his attacks, no one ever got emotional in my family. Once he got going, all this animosity appeared. My father would get pissed at Mark, and my mother would go apeshit that he showed it. Like he should be above losing it with Mark. Like he stops being a father if he descends to Mark’s level. She loves magazine advice.”

“Your family is really fucked up,” Jeremy says.

She ignores him.

“It bothers me that my father has to put on an act for my mother. Try to appear as this very steady cheerful ‘father.’ Not that it does any good. He’s that way 99% of the time. She sees right through it. She complains that his moods are difficult to live with. Meanwhile, the moods she’s complaining about are not really observable to anyone else. She totally dismisses the ‘No sweat’ attitude he’s trying so hard to convey.”

“Your mother is something. They both are.”

Seemingly, they have a quiet moment of agreement, but for CC, there is no closure. She’s still wound up. “If my father describes an incident with someone at work, she’s invariably on the other person’s side. He must have done this to set the other guy off. He must have done that. Or: ‘Why did you let him get away with saying that?’”

“So he never gets it right?”

“No, he does. Most of the time. I’m exaggerating. If he didn’t get it right, he’d be in the looney bin from my mother’s attacks. But when it happens, when he’s stumbling, whether he caused it or not, she has no mercy. . . . Imagine Alexander the Great returning home after he’s lost a battle. Yes, he will have to face intrigue at court—perhaps a coup. But what he really fears is facing his wife.”

CC imitates a Jewish woman in the Bronx calling her husband to task: “‘Alex-an-der. . .’” CC’s voice is determined. “My mom’s winning the war. She wins every disagreement.”

After a pause, she says, “Boy, has it changed. When my mother carried on about him, my father used to wink at me. Happy wife, happy life. He’d let her win. My mom knew and I knew and everyone knew. He was the man.”

“For a lot of guys, it’s easier to make believe we’re giving in.”

“But now—no more winks,” CC says. “When she wins, she wins. More to the point, he loses. Her attacks are landing. Wiping him out.”

“What are they fighting about?”

“Doesn’t matter. Any disagreement. She’s the boss. That doesn’t always have to be bad. Jay gives in 100 percent of the time, ever since he was two. It doesn’t bother him at all. To him, it isn’t capitulating. Getting on board is where he wants to be. Dora is right out there with what she wants. Beating her would be a hollow victory. She wins, he wins. Whatever floats her boat floats his boat. That’s how he was even before Dora.”

“You think that’s a good way to be?”

“Don’t know. He seems happy.”

“Except your father’s not like him.”

“Unfortunately. He’s the opposite. He’s competitive. I guess that’s why he takes what’s going on in his office so hard. Jay sails through at work. I think he actually enjoys the politics. He’s fascinated by what’s going on. Who’s down. Who’s up. He plays the game, and it’s half fun.

“…Not my father. Winning is everything to him. Everything he does. When he golfs, he feels terrific when he wins and down if he loses. Jay couldn’t care less—as long as he’s played well. When Jay beats him he offers encouragement, especially if my father has played well. My father can’t hear it. He takes losing hard.” She hesitates a moment. “Sometimes he can’t find a word?”

“He’s fifty-eight?”

“Fifty-eight. He jokes that he’s got early Alzheimer’s.”

“Does he?”

“No. Except I don’t think he’s joking. He’s developed this gallows humor about being old. Like there is no turning back. He’s getting old. Ahead of him it’s downhill. He’s done. The writing is on the wall.”

“He’s done?”

“He said he’s going to retire in two years. Then they’ll travel…I know he used to like it, but now? My mother would lead him around by the nose.

I wish he could have Jay’s attitude. But he’s not into that. Changing himself. My mom sees something wrong in herself and she’s out to become a new person. She assumes she can do that.”

“Can she?”

“Truthfully, she rarely changes, but it doesn’t matter. Just talking the talk. That’s 90 percent of making yourself feel better, even if you have to talk yourself into how you’ve changed.”

“That doesn’t work for him?”

“Are you kidding? He prides himself on his honesty. He might agree in theory. Like it’s better to see things the way Jay sees them. But that’s it. When my father loses in golf he’s down. Period. Even if he jokes, they are sad jokes. When he is smiling, he still looks depressed. I can see the look on his face when he sees my mother’s latest self-help book. He says nothing, but to him it’s nonsense.”

“And Mark?”

“Are you kidding? Well, there is no way he would play golf. But he’s exactly like my father. He has to win at everything. Only, he sees himself as winning, most of the time. Well, not winning—yeah, winning. Like the stuff at Berkeley, the revolution. He’s totally sold. Like you. Berkeley’s going to change the world. He’s on the winning side. He’s sure of it.”

She watches Jeremy as she describes Mark’s attitude, hoping he’s listening. She tries to emphasize what’s been on her mind. “He’s convinced that most people are going to be won over—think like he thinks. They’ll realize how the government sucks. They’ll smoke marijuana, reject the crap at the supermarket, ban preservatives, not get taken in by their parents’ rules, change partners if they feel like it, be sexually liberated. He’s leading the charge.”

“So he doesn’t need self-help books?”

“No. It’s Zen, grabbing the truth, something—anything as long as it isn’t American or Western.” She laughs, “The big thing is, he bounces right back when something doesn’t work out. He basically knows he’s going to prevail.”

“With girls also? That would be nice to have.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Love Machine? You didn’t waste any time going after me. Do you come down hard when you lose at love?”

He doesn’t answer. She apparently hasn’t heard a word he’s said about love.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “Right now, you’re way ahead. Two women in your stable.”

He quickly changes the subject. “So Mark has to win?”

Again CC smiles. “Not just win. Kill you if he can. The Mets have to win. I remember this one time Gil Hodges, after he became the Mets manager, made a stupid move. It cost them a game. Mark was furious. My father got on him about that. Gil Hodges is practically a saint from his days as a Dodger. Way back—my father prayed for him during his slump. Mark would never do that.”

“Prayed? What slump?”

“You don’t know about his slump? I thought you were once a Dodgers fan.”

“I don’t know about a slump.”

“It’s famous. My father loves to tell that story. I’ve heard it a hundred times. Even when I was a little girl. How no one booed.”

“No one booed?”

“It was 1952. Dodger fans cheered Hodges every time he got up. That was while he suffered through one of the most famous slumps in baseball history. That’s what my father called it. He told me everyone calls it ‘The Slump.’ You should see how proud he is of the people from Brooklyn.”

Jeremy is listening closely.

“After going hitless in the last four regular-season games in 1952, during the 1952 World Series against the Yankees, Hodges went hitless in all seven games, finishing the Series zero for twenty-one at the plate. The Dodgers needed him. The Series was close. Brooklyn lost in seven games. Hodges could have been the difference.

“When his slump continued into the following spring, fans reacted with letters and good-luck gifts, you name it. A Brooklyn priest, Father Herbert Redmond of St. Frances Catholic Church, told his parishioners, ‘Go home and say a prayer for Gil.’

“Hodges began hitting again soon afterward, and rarely struggled again in a World Series.”

Jeremy is amazed. “You know that story, even the name of the priest?”

“My father prayed for Gil. He told me about it, several times. It was like a miracle had occurred. Ever see Miracle on 34th Street? One of my father’s favorite movies. I’m sure he was convinced that his prayers, or one of the millions of Dodger fans’ prayers, reached God’s ears.”

“God?”

“Yes God. When I was small he encouraged me to believe in God. The point is, winning is important enough to my father so that addressing God about it seemed a natural. What’s the point of baseball if you don’t take winning seriously?”

Does he talk about God a lot?”

“Never, just that Gil Hodges story.”

“So your father is like Mark about winning?”

“Yes, that’s the same.”

“What do they do if the Mets are having a lousy season?”

“Mark can be pretty grouchy. So can my father.”

“All the time?”

“Fortunately, during really bad seasons they can shut it off. They hardly mention the Mets at all. They stop watching the games. Both of them never mentioned the Dodgers again after they left Brooklyn.”

“That’s what happened to me.”

“The big thing now for Mark is changing America. Yes, saving Vietnamese children. Helping Black people. But what I think he really likes is his certainty that he’s part of a giant cultural wave in history that will transform America.” She points at him. “Isn’t that what you want?”

Jeremy says nothing, but she is right. He’s told her before. He’s confident that history is with him and Mark and Berkeley. He’s sure of it. Nothing can stop them.

“No matter what happens,” she goes on, “Mark knows he will wind up in the winner’s circle.”

“And your father?”

“I told you. Gallows humor. It’s been particularly bad since Mark has begun to soar. Taking on my mother and Mark. That’s a lethal combination. Plus, I heard they are talking about early retirement at the office.”

“So, what’s bad about that?”

“He’s thinking of retiring, but being pushed out . . . that would be terrible. Ending his career with defeat. He doesn’t really know if it’s going to happen, but he’s not too thrilled.”

“I feel bad for him.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Jeremy gets up, goes to the fridge. Pours some Tab. Returns to the bedroom with it.

“Did you see A Star Is Born?” Jeremy asks

“Yes.”

“Your parents sound like them.”

“You think it’s that bad?”

“It doesn’t sound great.”

That thought takes over. Their discussions have usually remained at a safe distance, but this one is closer to home. To close.

“After I saw Judy Garland make chopped liver out of James Mason I decided I wouldn’t ever go there, be aggressive like that,” CC says, her eyes watering a bit. “James Mason. . . My father puts up a brave front.” She tries to hold on to that but isn’t successful. Her emotions are welling up.

“Since menopause?” he asks.

“I didn’t think of that.” She mulls it over. “I thought it was Mark or this feminist thing she has been picking up on.”

He laughs. “She’s a feminist?”

“Card-carrying.”

“Seriously?”

“She’d never wear the uniform, but she’s been a soldier in that war long before Gloria Steinem appeared. For years. All of her friends are giving their husbands a hard time. It’s definitely been catching on.”

“Really?

“I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s just as likely hormones.”

CC is again at the window. For someone obsessed with beauty, Jeremy’s home is lacking in nice things to look at. She’s grown fond of their Japanese maple.

“I like that tree,” she says.

“The cut-leaf maple? Carol insisted we buy it. I like it, too.”

“Do you garden a lot?” she asks him.

“Not really. We haven’t planted that much. When we do, Carol points and I dig.”

“That’s what my mom and dad do. Or used to. Now he gardens alone.”

The maple’s skeleton is striking against the snow. As she looks at it she speaks, as if summarizing for the jury. “Does my father love my mother? I’m sure he believes one marriage is all you get. So, he’d better love her. That’s probably how Jay would see it. If he thought about it at all. My father… There’s a good chance he loves my mom.” After further thought, she says, “I know he loves her. It’s not his love… or her love. It’s their hatred.”

She wipes a tear. She sees a tissue box. She takes one. The tears don’t stop. “My father’s disappointed… Not just in her. In all of us.”

“In you?”

“Maybe—no, not me. I think I’m his favorite person, but certainly Mark. My mom? It’s like the promise she gave to him when they got married has been revoked. She used to always talk about how great love and marriage is. She hasn’t given that speech in years. I think my father has become her nemesis.”

Hearing herself actually say it upsets CC more. She hadn’t seen it as clearly. Real tears begin.

Jeremy puts his arms around her.

She’s momentarily comforted by his gesture, but only momentarily. “Our doctor told him that sometime in the past he had a heart attack,” she continues. “He’s such a trouper, he probably ignored the pain. It scares me. I can’t imagine not having him.”

She smiles sadly. “When my father was on top of his game, he was something.”

“Your mother’s that tough on him?”

“I don’t think it’s her. It really is Mark. He’s slammed everything my father holds dear. My father thinks America is the greatest place on Earth. He’s lucky to have been born here, and grown up here. The whole thing… It’s at the core of who he is, how he looks at his life.  His pride in America. Living in, making it to Great Neck. In being Jewish. In being our father. In being my mother’s  husband.  Mark’s been chopping away at all of it. Losing his pride is worse than losing an arm. Mark’s taken away half his arm and is going for the rest of it. Can’t be fun that my mom is always on Mark’s side. Especially since she’s become so openly competitive with my father. She wasn’t always like that.”

“Do you think your father can still get it up?”

“Jesus, Jeremy. You are gross. Anyway, that’s disgusting. I’ve never thought about my parents’ sex. They’re my parents! Can my father get it up? That’s what you are asking me?”

“So you think what happens at Waldbaum’s is more important?”

“When…” CC begins, but can’t continue. Tears are rolling down her cheeks. She wipes her eyes, wipes her fingers on her thighs. Jeremy is soon holding, her comforting her. He licks the new tears before they can move down her cheeks.

“Yuck,” she laughs. The tears seem to be stopping. Then they start again when CC has a new thought.

“You know what?” he says. “I think you should call your father.”

The tears momentarily halt then begin again. “Now? It’s nine-thirty. He could be asleep.”

“Call him.”

“It’ll show up on your telephone bill.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get it before Carol sees it. Call him.”

Chapter 22

Hearing Her Father’s Voice

 

CC dials. She listens to the ringing.

“You want me to leave the room?”

“No, stay.”

The phone continues to ring. She moves the phone away from her ear, lifting her hand for Jeremy to hold it with her and listen in. His eyes are pulled to the beauty of the ring on her finger, connecting her to him, making him proud.

“Dad?”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I just wanted to call.”

“Aren’t you the rich one? Are you spending enough money for food?”

“I just wanted to talk.”

“Wait, I’ll get your mother.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Now I know something’s wrong.” He can hear it in her voice.

“Have you been crying?”

“A little.”

“About what?”

“Nothing. Well, I was worrying about your health.”

“And that made you cry? Listen. I was at the doctor’s last week. He said I’m doing great. My heart has practically returned to normal.”

“I wanted to tell you I love you.”

“You didn’t have to call to tell me that. I know you do.”

“I wanted to tell you again.”

“Do you know something I don’t know? Do I have thirty days to live?”

“Twenty days,” she says, and smiles sadly.

“You’re sure you’re all right? Listen, I’ll put on your mother.”

Evelyn gets on the extension. CC returns the phone to her ear, making their conversation private.

“Are you all right?” Evelyn asks.

“I’m fine.”

“Listen, I was going to call you anyway. Call Dora. There’s something going on with the baby.”

“Again?”

Evelyn repeats: “I don’t think anything serious, but call her.”

There is silence between them.

“Love ya,” Evelyn says in the tone she usually uses as a conversation winds down and she wants to get off.

But she doesn’t get off the phone. Like Ira, Evelyn doesn’t like the way CC sounds. “What else is going on?” she asks.

“Nothing. I’m with Jeremy. I told you about him.”

“Very little.”

Moving cautiously ahead, Ira is silent. Not Evelyn, who refuses to beat around the bush. “You don’t want to break up a family.”

“I’m not. He loves his wife and would never leave her.”

“So what are you? An afternoon delight?”

Ira listens wanting to interrupt, to protect CC, but Evelyn is in charge of practically anything to do with CC when it is the three of them. That’s how it has worked out. No decision was made. It has just happened that way. She’s got CC. He’s got the boys—well, Jay anyway.

Evelyn voice is scolding. “You deserve better than that.”

Worried that Jeremy may still be close enough to overhear, CC turns more fully away from him, taking full possession of their conversation: “Not just afternoon. It’s a morning, noon, and night delight.”

Evelyn and Ira respond with silence, which CC breaks with a triumphant voice. “I don’t think you can understand.”

“Understand what?” Evelyn demands. “That you are having a good time? Believe me, I get it.”

CC continues almost snobbishly. “Things are different in college. There’s more to life then the Fresh Meadow Country Club. Everyone’s bored there. People want to try things that are different.”

“Oh, my sophisticated daughter. You think what you’re doing is so unusual. Men do that all the time. The French. The Italians. Take off the leash and men go wild. I thought his wife is in the hospital? She’s not well.”

“This isn’t like that.”

“Fine. You know what you’re doing. Everything is hunky-dory. All I ask is one thing. . . . You’re old enough . . . smart enough. Try using your brain a little, instead of your—”

“My what?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Mom, I love him for his brain.”

“I mean your brain.”

“Love ya,” CC says in her goodbye voice.

“It’s your funeral,” her mother answers.

“Love ya,” CC repeats as she hangs up. She keeps her hand on the phone as she tries to digest the conversation.

“Anything wrong?” Jeremy asks.

“No.”

“I didn’t know you’d told your parents about me.”

CC tries to look innocent.

“You sound like you are connected to your mom,” he says.

“We can talk. She says what she has to say. That’s not the problem.” She shakes her head. “No way she gets where I’m at.”

“Her loss,” he tells her to no effect.

CC is frowning as she continues to go over the conversation. For twenty seconds she thinks about Carol. Then her focus returns to Jeremy

*                      *                      *

Ten minutes after CC’s phone call, Ira and Evelyn are both in bed. Ira is watching the Knicks on TV.

“What do you make of her phone call?” Evelyn asks.

He’s not paying attention. The Knicks are ahead 98–92 in the fourth quarter. Evelyn gets out of bed goes to the TV and turns it off.

“What?” he asks in his most irritated voice.

“You don’t care, do you?”

“I do. I can tell she’s upset. That bothers me, but not that much. She’s not a kid anymore.”

“I know that.”

“She’s going to do what she’s going to do.”

“She’s sleeping with her teacher. And he’s married. With a child.”

“You make it sound so sleazy. She’s a kid. We were both just like her when we were her age.”

“No we weren’t.”

“Oh yeah. You seem to be forgetting. That’s what we did. That age, you don’t think about what you’re doing. You just do it.

“We never did anything like that.”

“We came pretty close. I was in you two months before we were married.”

“For two seconds!”

“Yeah. You were scared about getting pregnant. Still, it wasn’t like you thought it was wrong.”

“I knew it was wrong.”

“But we would have done it. Now they can take pills. If we had them . . .”

“No, we wouldn’t have.”

“I’m telling you. You’re forgetting. No one is in control of what they’re doing at that age.”

“Even you. Mister Stay-in-Control.”

“I knew the important things. I knew I had to hustle to support you and me, and the family we were going to have.”

“Still. Kids are crazy nowadays, out of control.”

“You mean like Mark…CC––”

“Ira—leave them alone!” she barks at him.

“Oh. I mention Mark, your lover boy, and suddenly—”

“‘Lover Boy’? Ira—you are a crazy person. You should see someone.”

There is a long silence. Ira doesn’t want World War III. He speaks in his friendliest voice. “Fine. I take it back.”

“I have never thought of another man,” Evelyn snaps at him.

“We met when you were sixteen. You didn’t have time to fool around.”

“You really think if I wasn’t with you I could do what she’s doing?”

“You. Never,” Ira answers with too much sarcasm.

“Seriously.”

“I learned something interesting in the Sunday men’s group. In the Lithuanian shtetls, girls used to marry at fourteen or fifteen. They worried that any longer and a girl would get in trouble.”

“Just girls?”

“The boys, too. A lot of times they married and lived with the girl’s family. They had the opposite ideas than we have about adolescence. I keep reading it’s important for our kids to explore, takes chances, find out who they are. In Lithuania they knew what ‘finding out’ means. Trouble!”

“It certainly applies to your sister,” Evelyn says. “Irene was like a teenager throughout her twenties. Thought it was all about adventure. She had a lot of friends like that. They met at bars. One-night stands. Checking it out.”

When it comes to his sister, Ira’s is used to Evelyn’s narrative. He doesn’t disagree, but it bothers him that Evelyn still can’t let it go. “At least she eventually settled down,” he replies. “She’s got a good marriage.”

“And one son without a father.”

“Seth has been like a father to Billy.”

“Maybe. I just hope we don’t have a daughter who’s going to repeat all that.” She shakes her head. “What’s happening on campuses. I swear, being away at college really does crummy things to girls. Boys too, setting them free like that. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. There’s so much wildness at that age. They want to do everything they were kept from doing by their parents. How can that be good? It’s not like we’ve learned nothing to teach them. I just don’t understand where CC’s at.”

“Just seems to be the way things are. Everything’s so different now.”

“It happened so quickly,” Evelyn says cheerfully. “Jay and Dora got engaged in college. They couldn’t wait to get their life started. It wasn’t that many years ago, but it’s like they are from a different era.”

Hoping to mend things, Evelyn laughs softly as she continues: “Turns out your sister was ahead of her time. I’ve been talking to Dora about it. She said her sister and her sister’s roommates want to go around the block a couple of times before getting tied down. They don’t intend to have babies until their thirties. That’s what they consider normal.”

“I know.”

“I’ve read some articles. Your twenties are when you are supposed to live. So later you have no regrets that you didn’t have a life.”

“But it’s crazy. I don’t know who writes those articles. Adolescence is one thing, but it’s like adolescence has been extended into the twenties. Soon it will be the thirties. Being responsible is almost a negative, too boring—uncool.”

Evelyn doesn’t disagree.

Ira puts the Knick game back on.

“You really don’t care,” Evelyn persists. “Do you. All that matters is if the Knicks are winning.”

“I thought you were done.”

“But it’s true. You don’t care.”

“I care, but it’s the way things are now. Nothing we can do to change it.”

“It’s all about the Knicks, isn’t it?”

“Evelyn, there are three minutes left in the game. The Knicks have to win this one.”

“So that’s what matters, the Knicks?”

He ignores her as she stares at him. Those three minutes are crucia