Three Rivers (8 page)

Oh, if Kate were here now, to see her snuggled into her corner of this plane with Anthony next to her, happily watching the film. Kate hated Anthony, but then, was there ever a man that she liked?

Isabel closed her eyes and thought about Kate and what she had done to Isabel, to Ava and to herself. Usually, if she had any thoughts about Kate, it was about Kate’s funeral, but there was something about seeing Anthony again that triggered the past and her relationship with Kate.

She slipped into a half sleep, and into daydreams and flashbacks. Kate in her youth, wife of Sam, mother of Isabel and Ava. A tiny woman, just five feet tall, pretty, stylish and with a zest for life. She ran her home, her husband and her children with kid gloves on iron fists. Good to her neighbors, respectful to her relations, obedient to her husband and indulgent to her children. In addition to these things, she was not in love with her husband,
but dependent on him financially. She thought him socially and intellectually beneath her, and to be avoided sexually whenever possible.

His family were of peasant stock from Middle Europe and to be forgotten and never discussed. After all,
her
family were of upper-class aristocracy: Hungarian and Austrian. While she was born in Massachusetts, he was an immigrant and
that
immediately put him beneath her. They were both Jewish, but with a difference: She came from a family born into Jewry but so reformed that they could not speak one word of Yiddish. On the other hand, he could barely speak one word of English. When he did it was with a heavy mid-European accent that he never lost until the day he died.

Kate’s dream was to reform him, change him, and then leave him. Isabel, her firstborn, was to grow up and become rich and famous so that they could run away together. Kate was a hard worker, and once she had her dream and her plan clear in her mind, she worked at it hard.

Her first breakthrough came when Isabel was born. She loved and pampered Isabel, who was a happy, lazy, good-natured baby, one that responded to all the love and adoration by being an obedient mummy’s little girl. Then mummy’s little girl was turned into a little Jewish Shirley Temple that could not dance, had no voice and was downright rotten at the piano.
Oh, Shirley Temple, have you any idea what your genius and success have wrought upon so many plain, fat, little dull children?
To this day Isabel could remember the whack of the cane on the bare boards and the screams of “Pick those feet up, up, up; pick those feet up,” as an uneven chorus line of fat five-year-olds tried to keep time to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” The tears of exasperation in the eyes of the teacher, a poor man’s Fred Astaire, whose great claim to fame was that he had taught Eleanor Powell to dance.
Thank God Shirley Temple got old and became a lousy actress
. Isabel smiled to herself.

By then, Ava was two years old. A funny-looking little baby … well, not so much funny as ugly. She cried most of the night and screamed a good part of the day. She was an unhappy baby and difficult beyond belief, and she never changed as the years went on, never stopped in her bid for attention and care. What was so amazing
about nasty little Ava was that she got it. As a baby she thought it her due and was never happy even when she had everything she cried for.

Out of sheer meanness Ava gradually began to dominate the household. It would be safe to say that Sam, Kate and Isabel were terrified of the child. Mary, the maid-cum-nanny, was more amazed than terrified.

But Kate still had her dream, and although she found it more difficult to do her household chores in the morning and tear out of the house for the day with little Isabel, she carried on.

The years rolled by and the three women grew into their patterns. Ava finally stopped crying, went into sulking and whining and then to a moody silence. Sam kept working and paying the bills. Kate kept loving and adoring and praising Isabel, kept
trying
to praise and love little Ava, kept providing the wifely duties to Sam and had lots of nervous breakdowns that manifested themselves in hypochondria and several operations. Isabel loved Kate, this wonder-woman and martyr who suffered marriage and a difficult child like Ava, and whose whole world was wrapped up in Isabel, her only reward for her trying life.

By the time Isabel was ten, Kate started to shift some of her responsibilities onto her firstborn. When she was in the hospital the maid would do the cleaning, but Isabel would try to keep Sam and Ava happy. The meals were heated, and some even prepared, by Isabel, with the help of Kate on the telephone. She tried to please Sam but never found the way. As for Ava, she mostly took care of herself and only spoke to Isabel when she needed something.

The milestones of childhood: from happy, smiling, gurgling baby to fifth-rate Shirley Temple, to mama’s little
balebosta
(that’s Yiddish for an overachieving Jewish housekeeper), to the Kissinger of the Wells family. By this time the family did need a Kissinger for Kate and her depressions and frustrations. Hypochondria and illness came periodically and what little Isabel did was everything Mummy asked, willingly and lovingly, in the hope of a little peace in the family.

If there was not Mummy to be pacified, there was Ava; if little Ava was not happy everyone suffered. If little Ava could not sleep, no one else was allowed to sleep. If little Ava would not eat, she was bribed. If little Ava
had a tummyache, she whined and carried on until everyone else had a headache. So the undertone and overtone chant of the household became “Pacify, pacify, pacify.”

Where was Sam in all this? He worked, made money, ate, slept and pacified.

Isabel broke out of her daydream for the moment. She shifted and pulled her knees up a bit more, then snuggled deeper into her chair. She had not opened her eyes and was deeply drowsy, although not asleep.

There she was in the first year of her teens, a young beauty whose mother told her that she would never be more beautiful. She was a young Jewish princess who could go out into the world and have anything she wanted. The other thing that Mummy told her darling daughter was that she had youth and beauty, and must not
ruin
her life as Mummy had. What she must do is go out into the world, become rich and famous, and when Isabel had enough money then Mummy would get a housekeeper for Daddy; Ava would go away to school; and Mummy and Isabel would run off together. This confused Isabel. Was she a Jewish princess or a Jewish prince?

There were other things, but nothing really
serious
… Isabel grew up with not one problem to dominate her life, but a series of conflicts that would take her a lifetime to peel away.

When Kate talked to Isabel about Daddy, it was in the form of ridicule when he was trying to talk to them. She put down his work (he was a traveling salesman for the Del Monte tinned food company), made disparaging remarks about his lack of ambition and did everything she could to destroy his relationship with his two daughters. Her mimicking of his Yiddish accent and imitation of him playing cards were superb as comic relief, but monstrous if trying to learn to respect your father. But something went wrong with Kate’s plan, for Isabel did respect her father. Years later, when her mother kept harping on how she would one day leave Sam, Isabel shattered her when she said that if Kate did leave Sam,
she
would stay with her father.

Kate taught Isabel that marriage to anything less than a millionaire was ridiculous, and love was never mentioned. In all this it never crossed Isabel’s mind to question Kate. All that Isabel knew was that Kate loved her,
was good for her, gave her everything and suffered her life of unhappiness for Isabel. So there grew a bond of love between them. There was no bond between Isabel and her father, and, as for Ava, how could a bond of love grow there?

Ava by this time had a life of her own. When at home she stayed away from whatever family life they had together. Ava did not like the way they lived, and most of all, she could not bear Isabel’s kindness, her beauty or the attention she received.

Kate made sure that the two little Wells girls were always the best dressed in their group. By the time they were in their midteens, they had been to more theater, concerts, opera, than any of the other children in the community. They had also traveled more around the country. They were, after all, Kate’s playmates.

Then Isabel developed tits, big tits at that, and along came boys and dating. Those were the days of bobby socks and brown-and-white saddle shoes, the last days of the big bands, the first screaming years of a skinny singer with a bow tie: Frank Sinatra. The boys went for Isabel and she liked it. Suddenly there was a life outside of the one Kate had planned, but how could Isabel take her mother along with her?

Kate figured it out. She told Isabel not to worry. While she was out having a wonderful time, Kate would stay home and do some work around the house and wait for her to come home. Kate would have all the fun dressing her for the date and helping her to decide where to pin the camelia the young man sent that afternoon, and Isabel was to remember every detail of the evening. When she came home, Isabel could tell her everything and it would be just as if they had been together. A hundred times during the evening Isabel would think about Kate and how unfair it was that she was not out having a good time like Isabel. Poor Kate, poor mother, poor martyr.

Isabel liked being away from home, in school, having girlfriends, dating boys, even being alone. The last caused the problems between Kate and Isabel. School was a necessity, as was dating, but schoolmates, homework, sitting alone in the house and reading were attacked by Kate. She used her headaches, nerves, illnesses, like a sword to cut away all that separated Isabel’s life from her own.

Suddenly Isabel decided it was important to get a job
on Saturdays so that she could learn to earn money. Suddenly the Jewish princess with the wardrobe of a queen became for the first time a traveling salesman’s daughter. The money was not for household expenses, to be put aside from an education or to be given to charity — it was for Isabel to buy more of what all little princesses need. Kate, of course, promised to bring her to work and back again in their white convertible Oldsmobile. It seemed that the more Isabel tried to get away, the more Kate would rope her in. The first thing that Isabel did with her paycheck on Saturday night was to buy a red rose for Kate and the house. That made Ava hate Isabel just a little more.

The years rolled on and so did the pressures. When Isabel was ready to leave high school for college, the urge to escape from Kate and home was almost intolerable. The only thing that made it possible for Isabel to control herself over the joy of leaving home was her pity for Kate’s unhappiness and the desire to not hurt her any more than life had.

When she was seventeen years old Isabel was told that there was no money for her education, that there never had been. Sam at last opened his mouth, and with Kate prodding him along, declared that he did not mind working hard and supporting his family, but he did not believe in educating girls. The sacrifice to the family would be too great.

Isabel realized she had to support herself with no means whatsoever to do so. She had been brought up extravagantly and thought herself a well-to-do girl, the Jewish princess her mother told her she was. The truth was that she was spoiled, poor and hardly a princess.

Now Isabel started to fight for her freedom, for what she felt was due to her. She started to fight in order to leave Kate. With much stubbornness, determination and manipulative bargaining she finally wangled out of them the promise of a year of support in a fashion-design school in New York City. They had it worked out: She would then come home, work in a dress shop for a while, and if she was good, she and Kate could open a small shop of their own. She could become rich and famous in time, and they would support her and be partners with her as long as she lived at home. She said yes verbally while she screamed to herself:
No, never, impossible
. To
her their plan was a living death. She felt guilty for her duplicity and was determined to cram all that she could learn into that one year, once she got away. She need not have felt so guilty. After three months she went home for a weekend to be told she was too costly a burden, and that her precious year had been cut down to six months.

And so Isabel was out in the world with a total lack of understanding about love, relationships, truth, and a massive dose of guilt for the overwhelming desire she had to leave her drab family behind.

The daydreams were now slipping into nightmares. The fight for survival had only begun when Kate started tugging hard on the guilt strings. Isabel no longer wanted to go home to Kate and tell her about the men in her life, or her work. Kate was spending as much time as possible on New York surprise visits. Sometimes she sat in on Isabel’s classes, other times she waited in the car in front of the building Isabel lived in. When she was not in New York, there were the phone calls.

“Have you found a man?” Kate would ask. “Is he Jewish?” and “What does he do?” or “What do you mean, you haven’t got a date? You look for the wrong men. A girl like you, why can’t you find some guy to bring home one weekend?” Then, if she found one: “What a jerk! Is that all you could find? Why do you bother with these men? We didn’t send you away just to have a good time, you know. I hope you’re working. Have you any idea how hard it is for us to support you?”

“Yes, I know,” Isabel would sigh, thinking,
But, Kate, what you don’t know is how happy I am not to tell you about my life, my work, my men. When you ask, “What did you do last night?” I am thrilled not to tell you how I loved a young man, how terrific it was when he sucked on my nipples, what a relief it was to get rid of the burden of my virginity …
.

After three years of being dragged back and forth from New York to open the tiny shop of exclusive fashions called
Isabel & Kate
, financed by Sam, Isabel’s dream was that Kate would become famous and rich and leave her alone. But no, she tugged even harder on the strings of guilt and used even softer kid gloves over her steel fists.