Family Secrets (28 page)

Herman opened charge accounts for Hazel in the best stores and told her to buy nice dresses for when they went out. Since he had told her to buy, she bought dutifully. She went to the most expensive department and bought everything the other married ladies wore, so she could look like his friends. If they wore sequins, she wore sequins. If it was feathers, she wore feathers. Was cerise the color? Lime? Powder blue? Flamingo? Whatever was the most popular color of the moment, Hazel wore it. Herman was pleased with her fashionable appearance and didn’t mind at all that the dresses were so costly. She also bought shoes and bags to match, and Herman gave her a mink coat and a mink stole and a lot of real jewelry. It was much more fun to play dress up than just to go looking and touching the way she used to do when she had no place to go at night. Now she had to dress up every night.

Sometimes she bought funny novelty things for their house, like toilet paper with money printed on it, or a wastebasket with a jeweled poodle on it, or a toilet seat that played the National Anthem whenever you sat down on it, so you would have to stand right up again, and Herman let her put them in the powder room off the bar. He thought they were funny too.

Hazel had her own car and had finally passed the driver’s test after four tries, so she could go anywhere she wanted. She was careful to drive very slowly, and she only went to the stores or to the beach, because she knew the way to those places and didn’t get lost. Besides, there was no place else she wanted to go.

At the beach she would sit and watch the wives of Herman’s friends playing mah-jongg. Lots of times the women talked about their children and some of them showed around photographs of their grandchildren. Hazel wanted to have a baby so she could show off too. When she started feeling sick and went to the doctor she was very happy when he told her that she was going to become a mother too.

It was a diffcult pregnancy. She felt sick a lot and Herman hired a nurse to stay with her during the last three months in case anything went wrong. The birth itself was very easy. The doctor just put her to sleep, and when she woke up Herman told her they were the parents of a fine little son.

They named him Richard. Richard Winsor. What a distinguished name! He would be called Richie for short. He was so cute and looked just like Herman. Nobody at the beach club had as many photos of their children as Hazel had of Richie Winsor. Of course Richie had a full-time nurse because he was just a little baby. Papa had insisted on that, and Herman had agreed. The nurse fixed all Richie’s bottles and gave him his baths and changed him and did everything except cuddle him and play with him, which was Hazel’s job, and one she loved. She could play with him by the hour. He was much better than her baby doll had been because he was alive and knew her and laughed when she tickled him under the chin.

The doctor told Hazel and Herman that they shouldn’t have any more babies because Hazel had a bad heart and it would be too dangerous. Hazel didn’t mind too much because she had Richie, and one baby doll was enough for anybody. Herman went right out and bought twin beds with a night table in between them, with a nice big reading lamp on the night table, and after that he never slept in her bed again. Hazel didn’t mind that either. After all, your health was the most important thing in life, everybody knew that, and she knew that Herman loved her anyway.

Papa said he was beginning to look for land, and in a few years he would build a big estate in the country near New York City where they could all spend their summers. Then she could come to stay in the summertime when it was so hot and awful in Florida, and she could see the family, whom she missed terribly even though she was having fun here. Naturally Herman wouldn’t be able to spend the summers there because he had so much work in Miami, but he could come to visit her and Richie.

It didn’t look like Rosemary was ever going to find a husband. Poor Ro! She was so independent. She’d better watch out or she’d be an old maid and she’d be sorry, Hazel thought from her high perch as a securely married woman. There was nothing like marriage. She felt sorry for anybody who was still single.

FIVE

Being an old maid wasn’t as dreadful as Rosemary had envisioned. Here she was, thirty-three years old, still living at home, all her sisters and brother Andrew married with children, only herself and Basil still alone. But Basil had himself a heck of a good time. There was always some divorcee or widow, a touch shady perhaps (which meant that he slept with her), whom Basil was seeing. Rosemary kept busy and knew a lot of people, but men weren’t exactly flocking to her door, for the good reason that any man worth looking at had already been taken. She would never accept a leftover.

She had joined a music society, which met twice a week in the evening to play chamber music. She had friends there and enjoyed that they all had a common interest. Brooklyn was more fun than Miami Beach because there were more people here with her feelings about things. People in Miami Beach were frivolous, always on vacation, playing cards and sunning themselves. Here you could go to concerts, theater, art galleries, museums—not that she went often, but they were available.

“Oh, Rosemary,” her friend Jessie said one day, “let’s go to the gypsy tearoom and have our tea leaves read! It’s the newest thing; everybody’s doing it.”

“What’s so new about it” Rosemary said. “It’s a fake.”

“Well, so what? It’ll be fun anyway.”

Jessie was little and birdlike and played the flute in the chamber music group. Rosemary liked to be with her because when they went places together she knew that she, not Jessie, was the more attractive one. There was always a pretty one and a not-so-pretty one with two girls. Of course, Jessie had an edge because she was younger, but twenty-six and not married yet was nothing to boast about either.

“How did you hear about this gypsy?” Rosemary persisted.

“Well, I know four girls who went already and they loved it.”

“Who?”

“Well … Rachel, Bessie, Shirley, and Fay.”

“Who is Bessie?”

“She’s Fay’s cousin. You met her once.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Well, let’s go, Rosemary. Come on. I made an appointment.”

“You made an appointment without asking me? How did you know I would go?”

“I was hoping you would go.”

“Gypsies steal. They rob your pocketbook while you’re sitting right there. I heard about that.”

“There’s two of us; I’ll hold your bag and then you’ll hold mine.”

“How much does it cost?”

“Just a dollar and a half. More if you want your astrology chart done.”

“What’s astrology?”

“You know,” Jessie said. “It’s the stars, and the sign you were born under and who your compatible mate will be and all that. They tell you what your nature is too, and what’s going to happen to you.”

“It’s all fake,” Rosemary said.

“Well so what? It’ll be fun!”

So she went with Jessie to the gypsy tearoom, one flight up in a sleazy neighborhood, with red curtains on the windows and a red bulb in the lamp inside, and beaded curtains hanging over the doorway. It looked insidious, dirty, and naturally completely a fake. Jessie was excited and happy. Rosemary was a little nervous, because who knew what else that woman might do besides picking their pockets? She might have a brother or a man somewhere behind the beaded curtains who would drag them off into white slavery. Just the kind of fake silly fraud to trap middle-class girls like Jessie and all her friends.

“Who will be first?” the gypsy asked. Some gypsy. Probably just a refugee, a Hungarian or a Russian or something, who found a gimmick.

“Me!” Jessie chirped.

The gypsy looked at Jessie and then at Rosemary and shook her head. “No, first I read the doubter.”

“Why?” Rosemary asked.

“Because I don’t want your friend to influence you with her enthusiasm. I want you completely doubting. Then you will be more surprised when you see that I am right.”

“Mmm,” Rosemary said coldly.

“You want the tea leaves or the astrology?”

“Which costs less?”

“The tea leaves.”

“Then I want the tea leaves,” Rosemary said.

The gypsy shook the wet leaves around in the teacup and looked at them. Mumbo jumbo, Rosemary thought. “I see a man,” the gypsy said. Ha ha, big surprise. They always saw a man. “Yes, a man who plays a musical instrument.”

Jessie gasped.

“Do you know what an astral twin is?” the gypsy asked Rosemary.

“I thought this was going to be tea leaves, not astrology.”

“An astral twin,” the gypsy went on, unperturbed, “is someone who is exactly like you. In this universe, each of us has his astral twin. Most of us never meet him. But when you meet him you will both know each other.”

“So?”

“This man, who plays the musical instrument, who I see here in the tea leaves, is your astral twin. When you meet him you will both know it, and you will fall in love and marry.”

“When will this be?” Rosemary asked skeptically.

“You have already met him, but because you have not spoken to one another you have not had a chance to discover your twinship. You know him now, that is, you are acquainted, but you do not know him yet in the heart. That will come soon.”

“What else?”

“That is enough, is it not? You are not interested in anything else.”

“Who says I’m not? I’m interested in a lot of things.”

“This is your only question about the future,” the gypsy said calmly. She tossed the tea leaves quite nonchalantly into a large bowl full of wet leaves and turned to Jessie. “Now you, young lady.”

“Oh, I want the tea leaves and the astrology!” Jessie said happily. “And find me a boyfriend too!”

The gypsy peered into her fresh supply of damp leaves. “Ah, you, I am afraid, will have to wait five years before you meet the man of your dreams.”

“Five
years
?”

“Because at the present time he is living in a foreign country.”

When Rosemary and Jessie left, Rosemary a dollar and a half poorer and Jessie out three dollars because she’d had both, Rosemary snorted. “What a fake! I told you.” She put on a foreign accent like the gypsy’s. “I see a tall dark stranger …” She laughed. “That’s what they always say, and you believed her. I’ve seen better in the movies.”

“She must have meant someone in our music society,” Jessie said. “Who looks like your twin? Phil Levine! He has freckles and reddish hair.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead going out with Phil Levine.”

“She didn’t say he looked like you … she said he was like you. I wonder who that could be. Come on,
think
, Rosemary!”

The last thing in the world Rosemary wanted was a boyfriend who was like her. All her life, as long as she could remember, she’d wanted a boyfriend who was better than she was, who could represent her and make up for her shortcomings. Any man she could fall in love with would have to possess all the qualities she lacked. If he was just like her, how could she possibly stand him? A man who was her astral twin, whatever that was, would be exactly the kind of man she would hate. She would have to be very careful in the meetings of the music society and never even talk to any man who looked at all like her. Not that she would fall in love with him. That was ridiculous. No one ever believed a gypsy fortune teller, except a silly romantic girl like Jessie. Now Jessie would sit around for five years waiting for Mr. Foreigner, Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome, the myth.

“Why don’t
you
go out with Phil Levine, Jessie?”

“I would if he asked me,” Jessie said. “Nobody in the music society ever asks me out. They all act like I’m their sister or something.”

“It’s just as well,” Rosemary said. “There’s nobody there anyway.”

At the next meeting of the music society Rosemary found herself looking around at the young men with more curiosity than she wanted to. Well, she wasn’t in the least like any of them, and they weren’t like her either, so she was safe. None of them was her type. In fact, most of them didn’t have any talent, as far as she was concerned. She was really the best. It was this knowledge which had given her the courage to join the music society in the first place. It wasn’t that she really expected to find nice dates here; it was just that it was a congenial thing to do two evenings a week, and she really had met new friends here after all. Not special friends, just friends. Rosemary didn’t have special friends. She would like them and then she wouldn’t like them any more.

The only other person in the group who had any real talent at all, besides herself, was that man in the beige suit playing the violin. Jack Nature, his name was, from “Clothes Cleaned the Nature Way,” which his father owned. Their name was formerly Natelson. Jack was very shy and very beige—the beige hair, the beige skin, the beige eyes. He even had beige eyelashes. She could just imagine him as a child, all pale and beige, practicing the violin in the afternoons while the other boys were out playing baseball. Poor Jack Nature. He seemed about her age, and he wasn’t married either, but he never spoke to any of the girls, except once in a while to make a joke. Maybe he had a beige girlfriend.

When they stopped for a rest Jack Nature came up to her.

“Are you doing anything Saturday night?” he asked.

She was so startled that she said no before she realized what she was doing. The man hadn’t said two words to her and now he was asking her if she was free Saturday night. Maybe he just wanted to rehearse or something.

“Would you like to go out with me, then?” he asked.

Why not? She was thirty-three and she couldn’t hang around the house every Saturday night for the rest of her life. “All right,” Rosemary said, trying to sound pleasant.

“I’ll pick you up. How much do you weigh?” He gave a little half-smile. “Get it?”

“Yes.”

“How about eight o’clock?”

“Fine.”

“See you then.”

What had she gotten herself in for? A whole evening with a shy drip!

When they were finished for the evening Jessie came over to her with a big grin on her face. “I saw that,” she said.