An American Love Story Read online

  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.

  The kids in back were throwing little bits of eraser at Simon. Thunk. She heard the missile hit the back of his head and bounce off. Thunk. There went another. He just didn’t even move, hoping they
would stop. All of a sudden Bambi felt something bitter rise up in her throat. Bitter and sweet and sad and terrible. She couldn’t stand that soft little sound of the rubber hitting Simon’s head. She didn’t know why it made her feel so sad.

  “People!” Mrs. Collins said, rapping her pointer. “No more horseplay! No more spitballs!”

  Somebody in the back giggled because they weren’t spitballs. Then the class behaved. Bambi hunched into her sweater, hoping nobody would decide to throw something at her.

  The next night was the play. The auditorium was filled with parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters of the kids who were in it, everybody all dressed up. There was a hum of anticipation that Bambi could hear right through the heavy velvet curtain. She wasn’t nervous because her part was so small and she didn’t even have any lines, but she felt the excitement and wished more of it could be for her, that she too would be noticed and loved by those strangers out there.

  Then the curtain rose and the play began, and of course it went fine, they had rehearsed so much. When it was over, there were five curtain calls, the Silver Princess coming out alone at the end, everyone applauding and cheering. Then they pulled the boy who had written it onto the stage, the eighth-grade boy who had been sitting in the first row, wearing a suit and tie; his proud parents sitting next to him beaming. “Author, author,” people yelled. At first Bambi thought they were calling “Arthur.”

  He bowed to the audience. His face was shiny with pride and delight. His parents were looking up at him, just glowing, the same way the parents of the mean girl who played the Silver Princess were glowing, the way everybody was, looking up at these two.

  It was at that moment Bambi realized the one thing she wanted most in life. The feeling was so strong it seemed to fill her whole body, like heat, and she knew it would never go away. The one thing she wanted most in life, even though she was only six years old and didn’t yet know exactly how to be it, was to be Special.

  2

  1960—NEW YORK

  There were thirty “adult westerns” on prime time television that year, more than ever before or since. There were hip detectives surrounded by beautiful women, Kookie combed his hair on the exotic Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, and there were warm, loving, wholesome families whose teenage children bore nicknames like Princess, Bud, and Kitten. Television housewives were always slim and well coiffed, they wore makeup, aprons and high heels with their housedresses. They sometimes even wore pearls in the kitchen, and their feet never hurt. The lucky viewers who could afford to had color TV.

  Laura and Clay had several color sets in their new apartment at The Dakota, and Laura, who had been confined to bed during the last few months of her pregnancy, watched everything. Clay had become quite a star at the agency, having developed two of his own star clients and made two successful packages with them for television, and he talked to Laura of how he wanted to become a producer. Television was now on film and came from the big Hollywood studios instead of New York. During the long, boring days of forced immobility Laura waited for him to come home to tell her about this vital new world of his. She was proud she was a part of this progress and knew so much, and she encouraged him like a cheerleader. She was not aware that she knew nothing.

  The huge apartment was only partly furnished. The immense living room with its tall French windows and rich wood-paneled walls, its elegant marble-manteled fireplace and glistening wooden floors, lay dreaming, waiting for her touch. It was Versailles, it was a fantasy, it was being an adult. It would be family. When she looked at it Laura’s breath caught in her throat with joy, thinking of the long years of their future to come.

  Some of the things she’d ordered hadn’t arrived yet, but there were still so many more to be bought to fill all those rooms. Clay wanted antiques and good paintings, and said that when she was liberated from her bed again they would go to auctions together. Meanwhile he had gotten her a decorator. Laura held court in her king-size bed while the decorator’s lively male assistant brought her swatches and objects, photos and sketches. Something about it reminded her of mounting a new ballet, and kept her from feeling uncomfortable with her new responsibility.

  She never heard from anyone at the company. Anyway, they were on tour. She had been thrown into a different world, while theirs continued, and she realized they didn’t have much in common with her anymore. They wouldn’t want to hear every detail of her preparations for the baby, the way her best friend Tanya did.

  Tanya came to see her every day. Seeing her round, lovely face and merry eyes, or even hearing her indestructibly happy voice on the phone, always cheered Laura up. They had been best friends since they were children at ballet school. It had become apparent by the time they were in their teens that Laura would someday be a great ballerina and Tanya never would. Tanya didn’t care. “Always a cygnet, never a swan,” she had said laughing, and when she was twenty she married Edward Rice and retired.

  Edward was a theatrical lawyer seven years older. They had no children; Tanya was Edward’s baby. Laura thought of them as a couple from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Edward was kind, handsome, good and gallant; Tanya was totally fey. They adored each other. Clay only tolerated them—Tanya because he said she was crazy, Edward because he was so protective of Tanya—and Laura was disappointed, because she had hoped the two couples could be the best of friends. But it really didn’t matter, and she understood. In a way she was almost relieved, because it meant Clay would never look at Tanya and she would never have to be jealous.

  “I’m enormous,” Laura said to Tanya in her ninth month. “Somehow I thought I would look just the same as always, but with breasts at last and a small, round Madonnalike bulge in the front. But I’m a blimp!”

  “Do you remember that girl in the company with the tiny little head? What was her name? When she got pregnant she put sheets over the mirrors so she couldn’t see anything below the neck.”

  “Pinhead Penelope,” Laura said, and they laughed until tears came to their eyes. “Oh my God, can you imagine her pregnant?”

  “Do you want me to put up sheets?” Tanya asked.

  “Hell, no. I’m going to enjoy this. Clay calls me The Goddess of Fecundity. He keeps saying he doesn’t know how such a little thing like me could have such a big baby. He doesn’t know the baby’s little and it’s me that’s big.”

  “Do you remember how we used to weigh ourselves three times a day?”

  “And before and after we went to the bathroom,” Laura said. They smiled at how fanatical they had been. “Isn’t it wonderful to be commanded to eat instead of forbidden?”

  “It will all fall off afterward,” Tanya said reassuringly.

  “I’ll see that it does!”

  “Now don’t forget, when she’s born you have to look at the clock to get the exact birth time so I can have her horoscope done.”

  “How can you be so sure it’s a she?”

  Tanya laid her hand gently on Laura’s stomach. “I can feel her aura,” she said.

  Nina Bowen was born in June. She was a Gemini baby, destined to be talented and creative in the arts, charming and verbal, with quicksilver moods; at least according to the horoscope Tanya had made. She also weighed six pounds. When Laura got on the scale after Nina’s birth she discovered she had gained fifty. It was more than half her original body weight and she was appalled. She had another project ahead of her, and immediately started a strict diet, and, as soon as the doctor permitted it, ballet classes every day. But it had all been worth it: Nina was exquisite. Clay was immediately enamored of his daughter and carried her around the apartment, looking down at her and chuckling. He often came home late from meetings after the office, but the first thing he did was go to Nina’s lacy, beribboned bassinette, and if she wasn’t awake he would wake her, pretending he hadn’t.

  If motherhood had made Laura balloon, fatherhood had made Clay bloom. Babies giggled at him in elevators; even the ill-tempered screaming ones stopped crying and sm
iled. The baby would look at him with big affectionate eyes and he would do that chuckle of his. “I’m on his side,” he would say to the admiring mother, and she would smile at him too.

  “You really love babies,” Laura said to him. “I never knew that.”

  “I hate them,” he said calmly.

  She was stunned. “But not Nina? You don’t hate Nina?”

  “Of course not,” Clay said. “She’s ours. She’s special.”

  “And when they get older …?” Laura persisted. “Do you hate them then too?”

  “Sure. Kids are worse than babies.”

  “But what kind of a father are you going to be if you hate kids?”

  Clay smiled his winning smile and put his arms around her, hugging her to him. “If you want to know the truth, I pretty much hate all adults.”

  She put her head on his chest, relaxing in the warm circle of his arms. “Loonybird,” she said.

  She thought about it: Clay could charm people he didn’t even like or care about; it was his incredible charisma. No wonder he was so good at his work, being able to engender trust—that, and his talent of course. She began to like being a part of his secret, and being one of the few people in the world he cared about. She felt his sly appeal was not hypocritical or manipulative, but admirable. And so, from that moment on, Laura became his co-conspirator.

  They had a baby nurse for Nina, and someone to clean the apartment, and someone to cook. Often Laura met Clay downtown after his cocktail meetings and they had dinner in a restaurant together. She ate almost nothing. The weight was coming off quickly, but she felt uncomfortable and unattractive now that there was no longer an excuse for her to look so different from what she had always looked like. She couldn’t wait to be herself again, perhaps not as thin as she had been before, but at least she wanted to look like a former ballerina, the woman Clay was so proud of, not just anybody. Every morning she took an hour and a half class, feeling her stamina come back and her identity with it.