Close Relations (21 page)

My aunt loved to run things. She had taken charge of her daughter’s life and turned Barbara into a woman so showered by blessings that other mothers might have blushed at the audacity of accepting such good fortune. Aunt Estelle felt her success with Barbara was merely the result of planning and hard work. She had not done as well with her son, Kenny, but then she hadn’t tried very hard. Kenny was nervous and inarticulate and hadn’t interested her too much, so she only bothered getting him through Yale and M.I.T. He showed no interest in fine English worsteds or girls, but my aunt was able to ignore these defects because he lived out of town.

I could never understand why my aunt wasn’t president of General Motors or chairman of the Federal Reserve. There was no doubt that she could have governed New York City; she was smarter than the mayor, more resourceful than the comptroller, more energetic than Paterno. Mere sexism could not have kept her in the kitchen. She was so formidable that I could not imagine anyone stupid or courageous enough to try and discriminate against her.

But she limited her sphere of influence to Jamaica Estates. There, she was queen. And had I been willing to accept her patronage, she would have ruled my life completely, taking me to her manicurist for porcelain nails, arranging dates for me with orthodontists and restaurateurs and third-generation garment-center moguls. She would have redecorated Barbara’s allwhite bedroom in pearly beiges suitable for a thirty-five-year-old career girl and laid out my clothes for me each night.

“Do you ever speak to him?” she asked.

“To whom?”

“I’m glad to see you’re still grammatical. To Barry. I mean, he’s living in Philadelphia, so I thought you might have been in touch.”

“No. I have nothing to say to him. Why should I be in touch?”

“I’m not saying you should. I was just wondering. He never called you?”

“No.”

“I hear his wife comes from a very impressive family. On the Main Line.”

“Come on, Aunt Estelle. Their name is Goldfarb or Goldblatt or something.”

“You don’t think there are Jews on the Main Line?” She finished her last potato and wrapped the peels in a paper towel to throw into the garbage. “Grandma Yetta used to save the peels. She used them to thicken soups and gravies.”

“Was Grandma Yetta from the Main Line?”

“You know that’s in Philadelphia and stop being fresh, Marcia. Anyway, you haven’t told me a thing about your campaign. I hope you’re writing good speeches, so he wins. That Governor Parker is such a bulvon, with that fat nose. And how he spits when he talks. James Gresham must be turning over in his grave when he sees Parker. Did you know he went to the same prep school as Philip? Gresham, I mean.”

My mother arrived an hour later, as my Aunt Estelle was beginning to move in on me, unsheathing her fairy godmother wand. “Hilda,” she said, “I was just trying to persuade Marcia to try a little makeup.”

“I don’t like makeup,” I said.

“I’m not talking about heavy pancake makeup so you look cheap. If it’s done with a light touch it can enhance your features.” She turned to my mother. “Look at Marcia’s eyes. Gorgeous. Aren’t they gorgeous?” My mother barely glanced at me but nodded enthusiastically to her sister. “See, Marcia?” my aunt continued. “You should emphasize them. You could look like Grace Kelly.”

“Please, Aunt Estelle,” I said.

“Your eyelashes are very pale,” my mother observed.

“I think I hear Julius at the door,” my aunt said. “Marcia, go upstairs to Barbara’s bathroom and wash up.”

At dinner, Uncle Julius agreed with his wife that I should wear eye makeup. Fortunately, the conversation then turned to Uncle Julius’s bookkeeper, Nadine Silverstein, who wore cheap false eyelashes and too much rouge, and, from there, to Nadine’s daughter Tammy, who could not decide between secretarial school and a junior college. Aunt Estelle decided for her and, after she had swallowed the last of her cherry strudel, announced she would speak to Nadine in the morning and tell her what Tammy should do. “Leave the dishes,” she said. “I’ll take care of them when we get back from the Leventhals’. Marcia, a little lipstick?”

“No.”

“Ready?” Uncle Julius boomed. He held the front door for us and we scurried by him, three short, slightly broad-beamed Goldilocks past the Papa Bear. The early spring air was chilly and moist.

My mother sniffed and looked back at her sister’s house and sighed. Aunt Estelle sighed back, misinterpreting, perhaps, her sister’s melancholia. “Hilda, darling, I know shiva calls are painful for you, but…”

“It has to be done, Estelle,” my mother responded, in the family tradition of noblesse oblige. We walked over to present our condolences to the bereaved Leventhals, mourning a hundred feet down the block in a miniature Tudor manor house.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to say to Mrs. Leventhal. She was a big woman, but not overtly fat. Her size seemed derived from large bones covered with solid tissue, not from sloppy flab. Naturally, she wore black, a severe dress in a stiff fabric, relieved only by a slight scoop neck. Big Mrs. Leventhal’s appropriately large breasts, pushed together by a hard-working bra, made a long, thin furrow that continued beyond ordinary cleavage territory and on up to a couple of inches below her neck. One of the pearls from her necklace had caught in the furrow; it looked like an egg being devoured by a large-mouthed monster.

“Thank you, Marcia,” she murmured, acknowledging my sympathy. “So sweet of you to come. Ira would have appreciated it.” Mrs. Leventhal was seated on an avocado-colored cut velvet couch, obviously not aware that monotones were elegant. I stood before her with Aunt Estelle’s arm around my waist, so everyone would know that I was under my relative’s noble chaperonage. My mother had been left behind near the threshold of the living room.

Whether by chance or some subliminal caste recognition, my mother had paired off with the only other woman in the room who did not meet even the fairly flexible standards of northern Queens chic—wrinkles were acceptable, overweight in the second generation countenanced as long as it was neat and solid and swathed in expensive clothes. But my mother’s companion, chattering a little too gaily, was stupendously obese, with a bagel-sized roll of fat about her ankles that hung over the edge of her tan laced shoes. She was encased in a yellow dress with fat white polka dots, so she looked like a great slab of Swiss cheese.

“Marcia’s terribly busy with her politics right now,” Aunt Estelle was saying. Her grip around my waist had tightened when she noticed me glancing away from Mrs. Leventhal. “She goes everywhere with him, you know.” Mrs. Leventhal nodded. I smiled and tried to break from my aunt’s control, but failed. “He wouldn’t be running for governor if it wasn’t for her.” Of course, “he” was Paterno. I wasn’t sure if Aunt Estelle was avoiding his name because she had forgotten it or because she thought it bad form to utter the name of a Democrat before the soul of a Republican had a chance to rest in peace.

“He’s running for governor?” Mrs. Leventhal asked. “I’ve been”—and her voice fell—“well, preoccupied lately.” My aunt’s hand left my waist and reached out to her neighbor. “I used to follow all the news before Ira …” Mrs. Leventhal’s voice faded into silence.

“Oh, Lydia,” Aunt Estelle said fervently. “I know. I know. And you’ve been a pillar. An absolute tower of strength.” She turned to me. “Taking him for radiation treatments. Do you have any idea?”

“I used to read the
Times
every day,” Mrs. Leventhal continued, “all four sections, before …” A large tear slipped from her left eye.

“I’m sorry,” I said once more.

“That’s all right.” Mrs. Leventhal sighed. Then she looked at Aunt Estelle. “She’s such a sweet girl.”

“Very,” my aunt agreed. “Lydia, darling, there are so many people here, I don’t want to monopolize your time. I’ll drop in again tomorrow, with some lentil soup. Marcia made it. She’s a fine cook. Is Butch here? I want to extend my condolences to him. Such a good boy.” Thirty-seven years old.

“A wonderful son,” Mrs. Leventhal concurred. She gazed at me, a momentarily grief-free, clear-eyed gaze. “He’s a graduate of the Wharton School.” I nodded. “That’s a part of the University of Pennsylvania.” I nodded again.

“Is he around, Lydia?” My aunt was not impatient, but she wanted to get on with it, before Lydia Leventhal began her hymn to Butchie’s major in management, her ode on a Master of Business Administration.

“I think he’s in the kitchen with a few of his associates.”

“Come, Marcia.” I managed a quick good-bye before Aunt Estelle led me off, past my mother, now alone—deserted even by the fat lady—through the hall, into the dining room, and up to the double door of the kitchen.

“Please, Aunt Estelle. I don’t know him. There’s really no point—”

“What do you mean, no point?” Her whisper was so harsh it could have been a scream. “His father died.”

“But I don’t know him.”

“Of course you do. You met him several times. I was there. I introduced you myself.”

“But I don’t even remember him. It must have been years ago.”

“So?” she demanded. “Do you need another introduction? Are you going to stand on ceremony in a house of mourning?”

“If it’s a house of mourning,” I hissed, “it’s a hell of a time to be playing matchmaker.”

“Don’t think you can get out of this with a temper tantrum, Marcia. I happen to know for a fact that your mother told you that Butch would be here, and if you didn’t want to see him you wouldn’t have come, so let’s go. Or do you want to spend the rest of your life with that shikker? Is that your ambition? He’s too old for you. You’ll be taking care of him when his liver gets yellow. Is that what you want? Because if it is I’ll just leave you alone. Now come on. Be nice to Butch.” And with one hand pushing my back and the other opening the door, Aunt Estelle propelled me into the kitchen. And there, sitting at a tiny glass table on a wrought-iron pedestal, apparently abandoned by his associates, was Butch Leventhal.

It would be pleasant to report that under the fluorescent fixture was Butch the Beautiful, that beneath his white shirt were powerful shoulders straining to break through the polyester blend, that compared with him, Jerry paled to a small-potatoes Celt. Or it might be comforting had it been Butch the Crass, a drooling, thick-lipped oaf, a Semitic Stanley Kowalski without the sexuality. Or that he was Butch the Blessed, a gentle soul who scribbled sonnets on ledger paper. Or Brainy Butch, the Wizard of Wall Street.

But of course when Ira’s and Lydia’s Republican genes intermingled, the product was predictable. Nice. Balding, with a few limp hairs still growing on the top of his shiny scalp. Stood up when introduced to me by Aunt Estelle. Said thank you when I said I was sorry about his father. Nodded when Aunt Estelle told him I was a very important speech writer to a very powerful politician—so powerful that his name, like Yahweh’s, could not be invoked. Responded with a short list of Anglo-Saxon surnames when asked by my aunt what management consulting firm he belonged to. And shook my hand after I offered mine and told him, “Nice meeting you.”

This time I led, followed by Aunt Estelle, Uncle Julius, and my mother, all the way out the front door. They scurried behind me for the ten seconds it took to get back on Lindenbaum turf.

“Something wrong?” Uncle Julius asked.

“Of course not,” his wife answered quickly.

“Well,” my mother began.

“Well,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted, “when they hand out the awards for great love stories that shook the Borough of Queens, the tale of Marcia Green and Butch Leventhal will not be among them.” But I was no Noel Coward.

My mother looked beyond me, at her sister. “How can you tell after just two minutes?” Aunt Estelle demanded. She pursed her lips and glanced up at the streetlight, which I assumed stood for heaven-ward. “And you certainly didn’t go out of your way to make conversation.”

“How could I make conversation with Butchie? It would be like talking to a pot roast. He has as much vivacity as—”

“Boy-oh-boy,” crooned Uncle Julius, singing Aunt Estelle’s song. “My little niece is a tough cookie. Such high standards, Marcia. Seriously, sweetie, don’t you think you’re demanding a little too much? I mean, you’re an adult now, not a kid like the first time.”

“I am demanding,” I began, “just a touch of understanding from my family.” Off to the side, I could see my mother’s anticipatory shudder. I raised my voice. “I am demanding not to be trotted out—in the middle of a primary campaign—to meet some semi-comatose conservative who’s in mourning!”

“Marcia!” my mother’s voice broke out, snapping at me in anger and humiliation.

“And while I’m demanding a little too much, I’ll also demand that you remember that I am living with Jerry Morrissey and that you cannot make it go away by parading a bunch of jerks who have the I.Q.s of parakeets and whose only attribute seems to be that they’re Jewish and have a natural sense of compound interest.”

“Marcia.” That was my mother again.

“You’ve become a Jewish anti-Semite,” my aunt announced coldly. “The lowest of the low. I hope you realize that.”

“Estelle, don’t be so hard on the kid,” Uncle Julius interceded. “What has she got? Huh?”

My mother could not look at me. But Aunt Estelle swallowed saliva and pride simultaneously. “All right,” she said. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed.” Her voice grew softer, caressing. “Marcia, I just want for you the happiness Barbara has.” She spoke to my mother. “Maybe Butch Leventhal isn’t right for her, Hilda. I don’t know. His real name is Cyril. Maybe it had some effect on his personality.”

My mother shrugged. “I’ll help you with the dishes,” she said.

“Then you won’t need me,” I murmured. “I’ve got some work to do at home.” My mother shrugged again. I looked away.

“Don’t be discouraged, Marcia,” my aunt said. “We’ll find something for you. Don’t worry.”

“I’ve got to get home,” I said.

Less than an hour later, I leaned against the cold metal door of the apartment as if it were a treasure discovered after a long hunt. I put a key into the lowest lock.