Memoir: My Ned, Chapter 18-19
May. 26th, 2018 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badgerladyBefore Will was born, my seventeen-year-old sister came to live with us and finish her last year in high school in Waltham. The dominant note was struck when she came to the breakfast table her first morning.
“Good morning, Jan, did you sleep well?” Ned asked.
“I consider that question an invasion of my privacy.”
We chuckled.
“This is not a joke,” she said sternly. “I do not wish to be questioned about my personal wellbeing.” Oi.
One criticism Jan had of our ways resulted in a tradition that lasted the span of our marriage. Our first Christmas away from the parents, we spent our last $5 on a spavined, rickety tree, set it up, then realized we had no boxes of decorations in the attic—not that we had an attic, either.
I went into the kitchen. I baked gingerbread cookies and some poppyseed ones based on oil in honor of Hanukkah, polished apples, studded oranges with cloves, strung cranberries and popcorn; I think that first time I also gilded and threaded some walnuts, but that was time-consuming and difficult and was later abandoned. But we had our decorations.
As we stood proudly contemplating the result, Jan said scornfully, “Well, I can see using things you have around the house, but they should be nicer things, like antique gold coins.”
Of course, if we’d had antique gold coins lying around the house, we could’ve afforded decorations. But we took her observation to heart and thereafter hung the gold-foil-covered chocolate coins called Hanukkah gelt on our tree.
Years later, she mentioned in passing that her friends all howled at the “funny stories” she told about her year with us. I’ve never had the courage to ask her what they were.
There were other people in our lives, not as central as my sister or those friends who broke off with us so unaccountably, but part of the fabric of our days nonetheless: our neighbors. I don’t remember the exact chronologies of who lived in our four-flat building when, and I don’t remember the inhabitants of the apartment in the lower right corner (we were in the upper left) at all, but the ones I do remember influenced us in various ways that left their marks on us.
For some time, the women who lived downstairs and next door were both named Andrea, one called Drea and the other Andi. They had similar backgrounds to us financially and educationally, and they were both Jewish.
Andi and her husband, Randy Stern, had a tumultuous relationship. She was the child of Holocaust survivors who were pathologically enmeshed with their only offspring. For instance, they called her “Hitler child”—i.e., like a child who would inform on her parents to the Gestapo—because, when she became an adolescent, she wanted to close the bathroom door when she was using the john.
This kind of experience may explain why she was willing to put up with Randy for so long. He was the guy Ned lost that crucial $10 to and swore he never would lose at cards to again. He was true to his word, but Randy thought very highly of himself and was convinced Ned’s “winning streak” was a fluke, so kept stubbornly trying to break it.
He was also a philanderer of a particularly vicious kind. He encouraged his floozies to call him at home and taunt his wife with their existence. He had brought one into the apartment while Andi was in the hospital having their son, who was our Sarah’s age. She had returned to find not only that this woman was sleeping in their bed, but that Randy had deliberately contaminated her kosher kitchen with bacon. Then this charmer proceeded to harass her because she insisted on nursing their little boy, which he thought would diminish the attractiveness of her breasts and encroach on his private preserve. He’d threaten to call National Geographic to photograph her whenever she engaged in this “primitive” activity.
I don’t remember what he did for a living, but he must have been successful at it, because they presently moved into a beautiful, big new house. I visited there the day she’d finally decided to leave him, unbeknownst to him. As the movers loaded the furniture into the van, he called from work, checking up on her as he frequently did. “Yes,” she told him, “I’m having a good day. Mary’s here for lunch, and I’m working on the house. You’ll be surprised at how clean it is when you get home.”
The other Andrea, Drea Silverberg, was married to a lawyer named Kyle. They had a little boy the year before Will was born. We looked after him on a regular basis and he grew quite attached to Ned, who was always a genius with small children.
The three of us women, stay-at-home moms since I’d quit my job after Will was born, got along quite well. We also developed some strategies that opened my eyes to possibilities different from the standard model of nuclear families each in their separate but essentially identical houses.
First, Andi told me there was no reason Ned and I had to keep schlepping dirty clothes to the Laundromat when she had a perfectly good washing machine in the building’s basement. So I used hers, then she left it to me when they moved out; I in turn shared it with the next tenant of her apartment, and ceded it to her when we left.
Andi and Drea and I also began having lunch together every day, feeding each other our own leftovers—much more interesting and satisfying than eating in solitude the tired remnants of meals we’d already had once. At night, after the kids were in bed, we three couples would get together for dessert and coffee, turn and turn about.
Speaking of when the kids were in bed, we also practiced what Andi called “fire and disaster patrol”: if any of us went out for the evening, we’d notify the others and leave our apartment door standing open so they could respond if our kid woke up or anything untoward happened. The idea makes me shudder now, since in addition to the possibility of something going wrong that the neighbors wouldn’t be aware of, the door leading into the building was unsecured, so anyone could have gotten into our apartment. But we were innocently blithe about it at the time.
On our second anniversary, before Jan came to live with us, I read to Ned for an hour—the book at that time was Moby-Dick—then made us a rare treat, a steak dinner. I don’t remember what the dessert was, but it was something Ned decided needed whipped cream. The little supermarket was only a block away; I went ahead and put the steaks in the broiler while he made a quick run.
The steaks were done and congealing on the plates and he still wasn’t back. Baby Sarah was asleep, the clock was ticking, and the apartment stayed ominously quiet. After half an hour, I was starting to panic. I went downstairs, knocked on the Silverbergs’ door, explained what was going on, and asked them to keep an ear out for Sarah while I ran down the block to see what had happened to Ned. They agreed, with strangely solemn and serious faces.
“Don’t worry,” Drea said. “I’m sure it will work out.”
“These things happen to the best of us,” Kyle added. The slight hint of smug satisfaction in his tone made me realize what they were thinking.
The chapter I’d been reading Ned was full of dialogue between sailors shouting from the rigging. They’d heard my raised voice and thought we’d been quarrelling.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I was reading aloud.”
“Sure,” Kyle said condescendingly, patting my arm.
I didn’t have time to argue with them, so went on to check on Ned. The holdup was so typical of him I couldn’t even be mad about it. On coming out of the market, he’d seen a bird struggling to get airborne in the middle of the road in rush-hour traffic. He didn’t want to pick it up for fear he would injure it and/or his scent on it would cause the other birds to attack it (he had a vivid imagination). So for the past half hour, he’d been standing in the middle of the road directing cars around the little feathered bundle. Shortly after I got there, it had finally flopped its way to the vacant lot on the other side, whereupon I convinced him that his duty was done and he could come home to our once-festive dinner.
I never did convince the Silverbergs what had really happened, though. Who could believe it?
Another person who couldn’t believe the nature of our relationship was Kathy O’Toole from across the street. A lot of yelling came from their apartment, and I guarantee it wasn’t because anyone was reading aloud. I’d had a few encounters with her; she had four children—the eldest was five years old, and retarded—and one of them was Sarah’s age. When Sarah turned two, I’d invited this child and several others from the neighborhood to a birthday party. None of them showed up. Little Sarah sat at the end of the table I’d set up in the yard, surrounded by party paraphernalia, eating cake all by herself.
So I wasn’t feeling too kindly disposed when Kathy showed up at my door one afternoon. Still, her face looked bleak and she was clearly nervous as she asked to come in, so I sat her down and offered her tea. “I’ve just put up some bread dough,” I said, showing off. She didn’t react; I’m not sure she understood what I meant. She certainly didn’t care. After some chitchat, she launched into the reason she had come.
“I wanted to talk to you because I know you’re an educated Catholic,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I thought I was pregnant again. The last time, Jim wouldn’t even drive me to the hospital; I had to call my mom. Then he promised me there wouldn’t be any more, but last month we went to a hockey game, and you know how that is, after.”
It was my turn not to understand. Then I did, and stared into the abyss. I pulled myself together enough to attend to her question, which was, “Do you think I’m going to hell if I use birth control? Father says I am.”
Now I knew where I was. Having two kids so close together myself had crystallized my thinking on the subject. “‘Father’ has never had kids,” I said firmly. “He doesn’t know a thing about it. For one thing, you can’t be a good mom with so many coming so close together; nobody could. It’s your duty to use birth control. God’s not going to be mad at you about that.”
“What should I say in Confession?”
“Don’t mention it. Your conscience should be clear; you’re not committing any sin. It’s none of his business.”
About then, Ned came in the back door, home from the university. She immediately started gathering up her things. Obviously, now the man was home, it was time for whatever the women were doing to end. “No, no, stay,” I said.
She sat back with a look of trepidation on her face, but also a determined expression that told me she thought she was doing me a reciprocal favor. I’d mentioned earlier that I’d driven over a speed bump too fast that morning and had had to have the car’s muffler repaired. It occurred to me that she was staying in solidarity, thinking she could be a buffer between me and an angry husband.
Without thinking it through, I casually said to Ned as he walked into the room, “I racked up the muffler today.”
“God, you’re clumsy,” he said cheerfully. “Hi, Kathy. Would you ladies like some more tea? I just put the water on.”
I turned to Kathy to see an expression that must have been similar to the one I wore after the hockey game remark: she was looking into another world, one she hadn’t known existed. I hope it was inspiring rather than discouraging. They moved shortly thereafter and I lost track of her.
Another couple that embodied a world of violence and unbridled emotion occupied the downstairs flat after the Silverbergs moved on. They were white-collar and college-educated, but that didn’t stop him from beating her on a regular basis. We called the police once, then listened at the door as she insisted to them, “No, no, we were just yelling around.”
The next time it happened, Jan, who was living with us by then, said loudly, “Do you hear that?”
Dead silence fell downstairs, then there was some furious whispering. We never heard any more hitting; I hope that means there wasn’t any. But they hated us for it, both of them.
The people who’d moved into Andi and Randy’s place next door liked us. Hal Gigante was a construction worker on some kind of away job when they first took the apartment, so we got to know his wife, Shirley, first. She was rough-edged and blunt-talking and sometimes drank too much, but she had a generous heart and a robust sense of humor and we enjoyed her company. Knowing she was over there alone, we revived the communal ten-o’clock coffee-and-dessert ritual (I soon discovered the lunch-swapping wouldn’t work with her; she thought my leftovers were weird).
When Hal came home, he was doubtful about joining us. He didn’t think he’d fit in with a “college guy.” After the first evening, though, she told us later, he’d said in amazement, “He’s just like a regular feller.”
Shirley’s son by her first marriage had been born when she was only sixteen. She was the youngest of eleven girls; after their parents died, she was passed around among them and had a spotty education in life as well as academics. She didn’t realize she was pregnant for months, then when she went into labor didn’t understand what the cramps meant. They brought her to the hospital, where she was given an enema and sat on a portable toilet wheeled to her bedside. Then they closed the lid and rolled it away. When the nurse came to check on the progress of her dilation, she said, “Oh, no, I already had the baby. They took it away in that thing.”
That boy was now in Vietnam. She frequently spoke of her longing for the day when, as she always put it, “He comes walking in that door.” She never admitted, aloud at least, to the possibility that such a day might never come.
Happily, it did come. I remember him sitting for hours on our shared back landing, shivering in the mild Boston spring and dry-firing his M-1 across the back yard toward the woods beyond.
Last I heard, though, he had settled into a life with kids and a wife Shirley enthusiastically tried to bully, unsuccessfully by her account.
So we had a potpourri of experiences and influences helping us construct a life pattern that suited us.
“Good morning, Jan, did you sleep well?” Ned asked.
“I consider that question an invasion of my privacy.”
We chuckled.
“This is not a joke,” she said sternly. “I do not wish to be questioned about my personal wellbeing.” Oi.
One criticism Jan had of our ways resulted in a tradition that lasted the span of our marriage. Our first Christmas away from the parents, we spent our last $5 on a spavined, rickety tree, set it up, then realized we had no boxes of decorations in the attic—not that we had an attic, either.
I went into the kitchen. I baked gingerbread cookies and some poppyseed ones based on oil in honor of Hanukkah, polished apples, studded oranges with cloves, strung cranberries and popcorn; I think that first time I also gilded and threaded some walnuts, but that was time-consuming and difficult and was later abandoned. But we had our decorations.
As we stood proudly contemplating the result, Jan said scornfully, “Well, I can see using things you have around the house, but they should be nicer things, like antique gold coins.”
Of course, if we’d had antique gold coins lying around the house, we could’ve afforded decorations. But we took her observation to heart and thereafter hung the gold-foil-covered chocolate coins called Hanukkah gelt on our tree.
Years later, she mentioned in passing that her friends all howled at the “funny stories” she told about her year with us. I’ve never had the courage to ask her what they were.
There were other people in our lives, not as central as my sister or those friends who broke off with us so unaccountably, but part of the fabric of our days nonetheless: our neighbors. I don’t remember the exact chronologies of who lived in our four-flat building when, and I don’t remember the inhabitants of the apartment in the lower right corner (we were in the upper left) at all, but the ones I do remember influenced us in various ways that left their marks on us.
For some time, the women who lived downstairs and next door were both named Andrea, one called Drea and the other Andi. They had similar backgrounds to us financially and educationally, and they were both Jewish.
Andi and her husband, Randy Stern, had a tumultuous relationship. She was the child of Holocaust survivors who were pathologically enmeshed with their only offspring. For instance, they called her “Hitler child”—i.e., like a child who would inform on her parents to the Gestapo—because, when she became an adolescent, she wanted to close the bathroom door when she was using the john.
This kind of experience may explain why she was willing to put up with Randy for so long. He was the guy Ned lost that crucial $10 to and swore he never would lose at cards to again. He was true to his word, but Randy thought very highly of himself and was convinced Ned’s “winning streak” was a fluke, so kept stubbornly trying to break it.
He was also a philanderer of a particularly vicious kind. He encouraged his floozies to call him at home and taunt his wife with their existence. He had brought one into the apartment while Andi was in the hospital having their son, who was our Sarah’s age. She had returned to find not only that this woman was sleeping in their bed, but that Randy had deliberately contaminated her kosher kitchen with bacon. Then this charmer proceeded to harass her because she insisted on nursing their little boy, which he thought would diminish the attractiveness of her breasts and encroach on his private preserve. He’d threaten to call National Geographic to photograph her whenever she engaged in this “primitive” activity.
I don’t remember what he did for a living, but he must have been successful at it, because they presently moved into a beautiful, big new house. I visited there the day she’d finally decided to leave him, unbeknownst to him. As the movers loaded the furniture into the van, he called from work, checking up on her as he frequently did. “Yes,” she told him, “I’m having a good day. Mary’s here for lunch, and I’m working on the house. You’ll be surprised at how clean it is when you get home.”
The other Andrea, Drea Silverberg, was married to a lawyer named Kyle. They had a little boy the year before Will was born. We looked after him on a regular basis and he grew quite attached to Ned, who was always a genius with small children.
The three of us women, stay-at-home moms since I’d quit my job after Will was born, got along quite well. We also developed some strategies that opened my eyes to possibilities different from the standard model of nuclear families each in their separate but essentially identical houses.
First, Andi told me there was no reason Ned and I had to keep schlepping dirty clothes to the Laundromat when she had a perfectly good washing machine in the building’s basement. So I used hers, then she left it to me when they moved out; I in turn shared it with the next tenant of her apartment, and ceded it to her when we left.
Andi and Drea and I also began having lunch together every day, feeding each other our own leftovers—much more interesting and satisfying than eating in solitude the tired remnants of meals we’d already had once. At night, after the kids were in bed, we three couples would get together for dessert and coffee, turn and turn about.
Speaking of when the kids were in bed, we also practiced what Andi called “fire and disaster patrol”: if any of us went out for the evening, we’d notify the others and leave our apartment door standing open so they could respond if our kid woke up or anything untoward happened. The idea makes me shudder now, since in addition to the possibility of something going wrong that the neighbors wouldn’t be aware of, the door leading into the building was unsecured, so anyone could have gotten into our apartment. But we were innocently blithe about it at the time.
On our second anniversary, before Jan came to live with us, I read to Ned for an hour—the book at that time was Moby-Dick—then made us a rare treat, a steak dinner. I don’t remember what the dessert was, but it was something Ned decided needed whipped cream. The little supermarket was only a block away; I went ahead and put the steaks in the broiler while he made a quick run.
The steaks were done and congealing on the plates and he still wasn’t back. Baby Sarah was asleep, the clock was ticking, and the apartment stayed ominously quiet. After half an hour, I was starting to panic. I went downstairs, knocked on the Silverbergs’ door, explained what was going on, and asked them to keep an ear out for Sarah while I ran down the block to see what had happened to Ned. They agreed, with strangely solemn and serious faces.
“Don’t worry,” Drea said. “I’m sure it will work out.”
“These things happen to the best of us,” Kyle added. The slight hint of smug satisfaction in his tone made me realize what they were thinking.
The chapter I’d been reading Ned was full of dialogue between sailors shouting from the rigging. They’d heard my raised voice and thought we’d been quarrelling.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I was reading aloud.”
“Sure,” Kyle said condescendingly, patting my arm.
I didn’t have time to argue with them, so went on to check on Ned. The holdup was so typical of him I couldn’t even be mad about it. On coming out of the market, he’d seen a bird struggling to get airborne in the middle of the road in rush-hour traffic. He didn’t want to pick it up for fear he would injure it and/or his scent on it would cause the other birds to attack it (he had a vivid imagination). So for the past half hour, he’d been standing in the middle of the road directing cars around the little feathered bundle. Shortly after I got there, it had finally flopped its way to the vacant lot on the other side, whereupon I convinced him that his duty was done and he could come home to our once-festive dinner.
I never did convince the Silverbergs what had really happened, though. Who could believe it?
Another person who couldn’t believe the nature of our relationship was Kathy O’Toole from across the street. A lot of yelling came from their apartment, and I guarantee it wasn’t because anyone was reading aloud. I’d had a few encounters with her; she had four children—the eldest was five years old, and retarded—and one of them was Sarah’s age. When Sarah turned two, I’d invited this child and several others from the neighborhood to a birthday party. None of them showed up. Little Sarah sat at the end of the table I’d set up in the yard, surrounded by party paraphernalia, eating cake all by herself.
So I wasn’t feeling too kindly disposed when Kathy showed up at my door one afternoon. Still, her face looked bleak and she was clearly nervous as she asked to come in, so I sat her down and offered her tea. “I’ve just put up some bread dough,” I said, showing off. She didn’t react; I’m not sure she understood what I meant. She certainly didn’t care. After some chitchat, she launched into the reason she had come.
“I wanted to talk to you because I know you’re an educated Catholic,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I thought I was pregnant again. The last time, Jim wouldn’t even drive me to the hospital; I had to call my mom. Then he promised me there wouldn’t be any more, but last month we went to a hockey game, and you know how that is, after.”
It was my turn not to understand. Then I did, and stared into the abyss. I pulled myself together enough to attend to her question, which was, “Do you think I’m going to hell if I use birth control? Father says I am.”
Now I knew where I was. Having two kids so close together myself had crystallized my thinking on the subject. “‘Father’ has never had kids,” I said firmly. “He doesn’t know a thing about it. For one thing, you can’t be a good mom with so many coming so close together; nobody could. It’s your duty to use birth control. God’s not going to be mad at you about that.”
“What should I say in Confession?”
“Don’t mention it. Your conscience should be clear; you’re not committing any sin. It’s none of his business.”
About then, Ned came in the back door, home from the university. She immediately started gathering up her things. Obviously, now the man was home, it was time for whatever the women were doing to end. “No, no, stay,” I said.
She sat back with a look of trepidation on her face, but also a determined expression that told me she thought she was doing me a reciprocal favor. I’d mentioned earlier that I’d driven over a speed bump too fast that morning and had had to have the car’s muffler repaired. It occurred to me that she was staying in solidarity, thinking she could be a buffer between me and an angry husband.
Without thinking it through, I casually said to Ned as he walked into the room, “I racked up the muffler today.”
“God, you’re clumsy,” he said cheerfully. “Hi, Kathy. Would you ladies like some more tea? I just put the water on.”
I turned to Kathy to see an expression that must have been similar to the one I wore after the hockey game remark: she was looking into another world, one she hadn’t known existed. I hope it was inspiring rather than discouraging. They moved shortly thereafter and I lost track of her.
Another couple that embodied a world of violence and unbridled emotion occupied the downstairs flat after the Silverbergs moved on. They were white-collar and college-educated, but that didn’t stop him from beating her on a regular basis. We called the police once, then listened at the door as she insisted to them, “No, no, we were just yelling around.”
The next time it happened, Jan, who was living with us by then, said loudly, “Do you hear that?”
Dead silence fell downstairs, then there was some furious whispering. We never heard any more hitting; I hope that means there wasn’t any. But they hated us for it, both of them.
The people who’d moved into Andi and Randy’s place next door liked us. Hal Gigante was a construction worker on some kind of away job when they first took the apartment, so we got to know his wife, Shirley, first. She was rough-edged and blunt-talking and sometimes drank too much, but she had a generous heart and a robust sense of humor and we enjoyed her company. Knowing she was over there alone, we revived the communal ten-o’clock coffee-and-dessert ritual (I soon discovered the lunch-swapping wouldn’t work with her; she thought my leftovers were weird).
When Hal came home, he was doubtful about joining us. He didn’t think he’d fit in with a “college guy.” After the first evening, though, she told us later, he’d said in amazement, “He’s just like a regular feller.”
Shirley’s son by her first marriage had been born when she was only sixteen. She was the youngest of eleven girls; after their parents died, she was passed around among them and had a spotty education in life as well as academics. She didn’t realize she was pregnant for months, then when she went into labor didn’t understand what the cramps meant. They brought her to the hospital, where she was given an enema and sat on a portable toilet wheeled to her bedside. Then they closed the lid and rolled it away. When the nurse came to check on the progress of her dilation, she said, “Oh, no, I already had the baby. They took it away in that thing.”
That boy was now in Vietnam. She frequently spoke of her longing for the day when, as she always put it, “He comes walking in that door.” She never admitted, aloud at least, to the possibility that such a day might never come.
Happily, it did come. I remember him sitting for hours on our shared back landing, shivering in the mild Boston spring and dry-firing his M-1 across the back yard toward the woods beyond.
Last I heard, though, he had settled into a life with kids and a wife Shirley enthusiastically tried to bully, unsuccessfully by her account.
So we had a potpourri of experiences and influences helping us construct a life pattern that suited us.
