An American Love Story (2 page)

He told Laura about the suicide. Clay had been fourteen. The woman had been twenty-six, beautiful, married to a very rich man. A crazy woman, he thought now, looking back, but then
he’d had a crush on her; long-distance, romantic. And one afternoon, carrying in a case of champagne, he had found the body. She had shot herself through the heart. White-carpeted stairs, white wall-to-wall carpet, and the red blood. Death. “I’ll never forget the smell,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears.

“Suicide …” Laura said. “No one should ever have to be that miserable.”

“Or that alone,” Clay said, and held her hand.

“Whenever we’re dancing the section where my partner is holding me up above his head, I feel a real wave of fear,” Laura told him. “I know how big and strong those guys are, but still I’m afraid he’ll drop me. I can’t ever quite get over being afraid of that.”

“I’ll never drop you,” Clay said.

They went to bed together, and then they moved in together, and then her mother gave them a lovely wedding. And two years later, at only twenty-nine, Clay had bought himself and Laura a beautiful apartment in The Dakota, an elegant, historical old building on Central Park West, overlooking the park. “Our lives will always be wonderful,” he said.

Our lives will always be wonderful.
…

Now in her dressing room Laura leaned forward and put black eye shadow on her lids, extending it far outward, then glued on the spidery false eyelashes, and last, very carefully, applied the black lipstick. She was proud of the makeup; it was so bizarre, and so right for the part, and she had created it herself.

The dresser came in and zipped up her sexy red costume. Clay would be in the audience tonight. Usually he was so busy with clients it was simply understood that he and Laura each had to do their separate work and they met late at night at home, but tonight was a landmark event. And afterward they would go out to celebrate.

It was time to go onstage. The hushed moment, the instant of terrified stage fright, then the familiar music, and her run out into the golden light. The applause; warm, familiar. And then the joy of motion, of expressing the passionate feelings of her character, and of herself too. While she danced, Laura remembered how
much she loved doing this despite the restrictions it had placed on her. But it was also something she had chosen over twenty years ago, when she knew nothing. She had wanted it enough to be willing to give up her life for it, until now. She would never regret any of it. She would always be grateful it had been hers. She would not be giving up dance entirely, only the applause: she would continue to go to ballet classes, but on a normal schedule, like a normal person. She loved movement and she always would.

Good-bye, she thought, leaping higher than she ever had before. Good-bye …

And then the curtain went down, and for the last time there was the applause; like pelting rain, like pelting love. She took her curtain calls, and of course there was her armful of red roses. Thank you, she mouthed, smiling. Thank you … for all three of us. And thought: And my life begins.

1959—NEW YORK

This is the first day of my destiny, Susan Josephs thought, and I’ll never forget it. Although it was a thirty-block walk from Barnard College, where she was an eighteen-year-old sophomore, to her parents’ West 86th Street apartment, where she reluctantly still lived, on this dark and chilly autumn evening she didn’t want to take the bus. Her mind was so full of thoughts and her body so full of excited energy that she welcomed the time alone.

She was a very pretty girl, tall, slim and curvy, with masses of shiny auburn curls that were always out of control, mischievous green eyes, and a look of intelligence and adventure. People could tell at once that she was one of those bright and determined people who could indeed choose their own destiny; but what they didn’t know was how shy she was. She had not been born shy, it had happened, more and more over the years. The only thing that gave her a sense of herself was her writing. Writing was her expression and her escape. She sat working at her typewriter for hours into the night, dreaming of becoming a good journalist, of
traveling to distant places, of learning and experiencing what life could bring. Her idol was Margaret Mead, who also had been a student at Barnard once, long ago. Susan too wanted to write about how people behaved; not in Samoa but here, a sort of social anthropologist. And now at last … at last … she’d had an article accepted by the
Barnard Bulletin
, with a promise from the editor that they wanted more!

Her article was sharp and funny, an hour in the life of a student taking a gut course. This was an Ivy League college for serious women, but not everybody was as serious as they pretended to be. Including sometimes herself. She’d been one of the students in that course, taken at Columbia, in search of attractive men.

She had met Gordon Van Allen there, in the last semester of her freshman year, gone with him all summer and this fall, and now she was going to tell him good-bye. She had tried once before to break up with him and he had actually almost cried. Her friends thought she was crazy to want to get rid of such a handsome good catch. He was not only nice but modest. His family was social and rich. He took her to restaurants for dinner, not just out for drinks after she had eaten free at home. And he really loved her. Here she was, her friends reminded her: a girl whose parents had told her she could only apply to a college that would be close enough so she could continue to live at home; so great was their fear of letting her get away from them. Gordon would save her. She could marry him and escape.

That was the last way in the world Susan intended to escape. It was only a different kind of trap. She knew she was too young to be tied down so early in her life, and besides, although she was truly fond of Gordon she didn’t love him back. It had started with sex, and lasted because of sex. A nice girl couldn’t do certain things with a boy unless he claimed he was in love with her, and they were going steady. Not that the two of them did so much: there was no place to go. But the kissing and touching were so wonderful she allowed herself to ignore (temporarily) her knowledge that conversation with him was limited. He was far from a genius. But whom did she expect to meet in a gut course, and
what girl in her right mind wouldn’t want to neck for hours with Gordon Van Allen?

Poor Gordon. But then, despite what her friends said, Susan wasn’t so sure Gordon’s parents would ever have let him marry her. She was Jewish, he was Christian. Her parents had told her often enough that it was an anti-Semitic world. Stay with your own kind. Protect yourself. She was sure his parents felt the same way, and even if he cried tonight it would be because he was only thinking of the present, and how lonely he would be for a while.

She reached her building and went upstairs. The apartment was warm and pretty, and as always immaculate. Her mother was in her bedroom sewing a cover for her Kotex box. “The
Bulletin
finally took an article I wrote!” Susan said. “It’s going to be in tomorrow.”

“I knew you’d do it,” her mother said. “Fix your hair.”

“I will. I’m going out tonight anyway, after dinner.”

“That Gordon again?”

Susan nodded. “I’m going to break up with him tonight.”

“Good,” her mother said. “He’s not for you.”

When her father came home they had dinner, the three of them, promptly at six, as always. Tomato juice, steak, string beans, and baked stuffed potatoes. A slice of canned pineapple on a piece of iceberg lettuce, a ball of cream cheese in the center of the pineapple slice; a dinner salad Susan detested and her parents liked. Her father was cutting his meat into tiny pieces with a look of suspicion.

“There’s black stuff on this steak,” he said.

“That’s just the mark from the grill,” her mother said.

“It looks like dirt.”

“It’s not dirt. Eat it.”

He pushed it around his plate some more. “I don’t want it,” he said, and put down his fork.

“You’re always such a bitch when you come back from visiting your parents’ graves with your family,” her mother said. “Your family always puts you in a foul mood. I suppose they wanted money again?”

Her father stood up, put down his napkin, and choking back
tears ran out of the room. Susan felt as if there were ants crawling all over her skin, and her stomach clenched, but she and her mother pretended nothing had happened. This scene had occurred before, and it would again. Eventually her father came back to the table and murmured an apology, and then Susan cleared the table and her mother served dessert.

The little family ate in silence. The airless cloud of her parents’ dead dreams filled the room, and Susan found it hard to breathe, afraid to look into their eyes and see their anxiety that frightened her so. She was all they had—their dream of the future since their own had betrayed them. No one had ever made a joke in that house, no one ever laughed, not even at Jack Benny or George Burns and Gracie Allen on TV. How could people live all their lives and not even try to say something funny? It was so different when she was with her friends.

“The editor liked my piece a lot,” Susan said. “It was the one about the gut course. She said it was good satire.”

“It was all right,” her mother said. “I would have preferred something more up to your usual elegant style.”

“It’s a newspaper.”

Her mother nodded, a sign she was changing the subject. “After you get rid of that boy tonight you’ll have to look around for some new ones,” she said. “Nice boys who’ll stay around and be your friends.”

“I’m also going to be very busy with my work,” Susan said.

“Of course your education is important, but you have to go out.”

“Oh, I’ll go out.”

“Excuse me,” her father said, and went into the living room to turn on the television.

What’s wrong with me? Susan thought. Why can’t I just tell her yes yes yes and then do what I want? She’d never know. Why do I still keep trying to get her to be on my side when I know it’s hopeless?

“We rented a house at the beach again for next summer,” her mother said. “You’ll meet some nice boys from your own background.”

So soon! She hadn’t thought they would have to talk about next summer this soon. She crossed all her fingers under the table and took a deep breath. “Well … to tell you the truth, Mom … I was thinking about summer school,” she said. She could hear her voice shaking and was ashamed of herself for it. “There’s a writing course I’m dying to take, they want two thousand words a week, and without having to take all the required courses it would give me more time. It’s hard to get accepted, but …”

“You can’t go to summer school; we’re going to the beach.”

“I could come out weekends.”

“I won’t allow you to stay in this apartment alone.”

Angry frustration was a knot in her chest. “I could commute with Dad.”

“No. You’ll stay there with me.”

“But …”

“No but. If you want to write you can write at the beach.”

“I want to
learn.
I can’t learn if …”

“No, and that’s final.”

I can’t wait to get out of here, Susan thought, as she so often did; I can’t wait, I can’t wait.…

Her mother smiled. “Why don’t you and I have a date on Saturday? I’ll take you for a decent haircut and then I’ll buy you a new party dress. I saw something you’d look like a doll in.”

Your Barbie doll, Susan thought. “That would be fun,” she lied, imagining the haircut that would be too old for her, the dress that would be too young.

Her mother nodded. “You’ll get rid of
him
tonight and now you’ll start to listen to me and go out with
substantial
people.” Case closed.

Suddenly, as if it were the dark side of her destiny, waiting for her implacably, Susan knew she would never marry anyone. She wanted independence too much, freedom too desperately. Who would want to marry her unless he could change her? She would never be able to marry someone who did. Life had certain rules. This would be her punishment for breaking them.

1959—SEATTLE

School smelled of chalk and dust. The auditorium, where they were going to have the school play, had scratchy red wool seats, and a red velvet curtain on the big stage. Barbara “Bambi” Green was six years old, in the first grade, and she was going to be allowed to be in the school play in a minor part. She was happy and excited to be in the play, but depressed that she had to be only an elf. She was small and skinny, with big brown eyes and walnut-colored hair in pigtails, and she knew she wasn’t pretty enough, or popular enough, or even old enough to play the Silver Princess, but that was what she wished she could be. She and all the other girls.…

Now everyone was milling around on the stage, the girls and the boys, waiting for the dress rehearsal to begin. The Silver Princess was standing off to the side in isolated splendor, her gossamer costume glittering, a rhinestone crown on her head and a scepter in her hand. Bambi approached her timidly and touched a corner of her skirt. “Your costume is silver,” she said.

The Silver Princess looked down at her. “Your costume is brown and you look like doo doo,” she said.

Bambi walked away and tried not to cry. Why were the kids so mean? This was the year she had no friends in school, except for Simon Green, the new boy, who sat next to her in all her classes because they had to sit in alphabetical order. Nobody liked Simon either, so naturally Bambi wouldn’t have anything to do with him even though he was anxious to be her friend. Here he was, trying to come over to talk to her. She pretended not to see him and took her place with the other elves.

After the dress rehearsal they all went back to their classes. Mrs. Collins was writing words on the blackboard. Bambi was a pretty good reader already and so was Simon. He looked at her and smiled and she turned away, hoping no one would notice that he liked her. That would make things worse. He was earnest and
skinny, with a very short crew cut, big pointy ears, and the pale, vulnerable neck of a good boy.